College Girls

College Girls

By
Abbe Carter Goodloe
Illustrated by
Charles Dana Gibson
New York
Charles Scribner’s Sons
1895
Copyright, 1895, by
Charles Scribner’s Sons
TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

A PHOTOGRAPH

THERE was a great deal of jangling of bells, and much laughter and talk, and the chaperon, who was an assistant Greek professor, looked as if she had never heard of Aristophanes, and listened apparently with the most intense interest to a Harvard half-back eagerly explaining to her the advantages of a flying wedge; and when the College loomed in sight, with its hundreds of lights, and the sleigh drew up under the big porte cochère, and while a handsome youth was bidding his sister, the hostess of the party, an unusually affectionate good-by, she explained to the rest how very sorry she was she could not invite them in. But the Harvard men, in a feeling sort of way, said they understood, and after much lifting of hats and more laughter, the sleigh went off, and the chaperon and her charges were left standing in the “Centre.”

She confessed then that she was extremely tired and that she did not think she ever cared again to see the “winter sports.” She thought the sight afforded her that afternoon, of two nice boys, very scantily clothed and with bloody faces, banging away at each other until they could hardly stand, compared with the view of those same young gentlemen the week before at the College, immaculately dressed and with very good-looking noses and eyes, was entirely too great a strain on her. So she went off to her study and left the excited and pleased young women to stroll down the corridor to Miss Ronald’s room, to talk it over and to decide for the twentieth time that Somebody of ’94 ought to have come off winner in the fencing match, instead of Somebody else of ’93.

The room they went into was a typical college room, with its bookstands and long chairs and cushions and innumerable trophies, of which Miss Ronald was rather proud. She was a stylish girl, with New York manners and clothes, and a pretty, rather expressionless face, strongly addicted to fads, and after almost four years of college life still something of a fool. She had become popular through her own efforts and the fact that she had a brother at Harvard. If a girl really wishes to be a favorite in college she must arrange to have some male relative at a neighboring university.

The sleighing party over to Harvard for the winter sports had been an especial success, so her guests took off their wraps and settled themselves in her chairs in a very cordial sort of way, and discussed amiably the merits of the tug-of-war, while someone made chocolate. After a while, when they had all had their say about the pole-vaulting and the running jumps, the conversation flagged a little and the room came in for its share of attention.

There was a comparative stranger among the guests—a Miss Meredith—to whom Miss Ronald could show her numerous souvenirs for the first time. She was especially glad to have them to show to this particular girl because she thought they would impress her—although it would have been a little difficult for a casual observer to understand just why, for as Miss Meredith was led around the room by her hostess, from the screen made of cotillion favors and the collection of lamp-post signs presented to her by Harvard admirers afflicted with kleptomania, over to the smoking-cap and tobacco-pouch of some smitten undergraduate, anyone could see what a handsome girl she was, and though more plainly dressed than the others, that she seemed to be thoroughly at her ease. Perhaps Miss Ronald expected her to be impressed because she had taken her up, and had first introduced her to this set and made a success of her. No one had known anything about her or her people, and she had entered shortly before as a “special student,” and therefore belonged to no particular class. She was evidently a little older than Miss Ronald and her friends, and her face was somewhat sad, and there was a thoughtful look in the eyes. She seemed to be rather haughty, too, and as if afraid she would be patronized. But Miss Ronald, whose particular craze in the beauty line was a cream complexion, gray eyes, and red-brown hair, had declared the new-comer to be lovely, and even after she had discovered that this handsome girl was not of her own social standing, that her people were unknown and unimportant, she still declared her intention of cultivating her. She had found this harder to do than she had expected, and so, as she led her around the room, she rather delighted in the belief that she was impressing this girl by the many evidences of a gay social career.

The others, who had seen all the trophies many times before, and who knew just which one of Miss Ronald’s admirers had given her the Harvard blazer, and where she had got the Yale flag and the mandolin with the tiger-head painted on it—for Miss Ronald, being a wise young lady, cultivated friends in every college—sat back and talked among themselves and paid very little attention to what the other two were doing. They were a little startled, therefore, by a low exclamation from the girl with Miss Ronald. She had stopped before a long photograph-case filled with pictures of first violins and celebrated actors and college men—all the mute evidences of various passing fancies. Miss Ronald, who was putting away the faded remains of some “Tree-flowers” and some pictures of Hasty Pudding theatricals, looked over at the girl.

“What is it?” she said, carelessly, and then noting her pallor and the direction of her gaze she laughed in an embarrassed little way and went over to her.

“Is it this?” she said, taking a half-hidden photograph from among the jumble of pictures and holding it up to the view of all.

It was the photograph of a young man, a successful man, whose name had become suddenly famous and whose personality was as potent as his talents. He was not handsome, but his fine face was more attractive than a handsome one would have been. There was a look of determination in the firmly closed lips and square-cut jaw, and an indefinable air of the man of the world about the face which rendered it extremely fascinating. On the lower edge of the picture was written his name, in a strong, bold hand that corresponded with the look on the face.

“My latest craze,” said Miss Ronald, smiling rather nervously and coloring a little as she still held the picture up. There was a slight and awkward pause, and then half a dozen hands reached for it. There was not a girl in the room who had not heard of this man and wished she knew him, and who had not read his last book and the latest newspaper paragraphs about him. But their interest had been of the secretly admiring order, and they all felt this girl was going a little too far, that it was not just the thing to have his picture—the picture of a man she did not know. And as she looked around and met the gray eyes of the girl beside her she felt impelled to explain her position as if in answer to the unspoken scorn in them. She was embarrassed and rather angry that it had all happened. She could laugh at the first-violins and the opera-tenors and the English actor—they had only been silly fancies—but this one was different. Without knowing this man she had felt an intense interest in him and his face had fascinated her, and she had persuaded herself that he was her ideal and that she could easily care for him. She suddenly realized how childish she had been and the ridiculousness of it all, and it angered her.

“Of course I know it isn’t nice to have his picture—in this way—” she began defiantly, “but I know his cousin—it was from him that I got this photograph—and he has promised to introduce us next winter.” She seemed to forget her momentary embarrassment and looked very much elated. “Won’t that be exciting? I shan’t know in the least what to say to him. Think of meeting the most fascinating man in New York!”

“Be sure you recognize him,” murmured one of the girls, gloomily, from the depths of a steamer-chair. “I met him last winter. I had never seen a photograph of him then, and not knowing he was the one, I talked to him for half an hour. When I found out after he had gone who he was, I couldn’t get over my stupidity. My mother was angry with me, I can tell you!”

Each one knew something about him, or knew someone who knew him, or the artist who illustrated his stories, or the people with whom he had just gone abroad, or into what thousandth his last book had got. They all thought him a hero and fascinatingly handsome, and they declared with the sentimental candor of the very young girl, that they would never marry unless they could marry a man like that—a man who had accomplished great things and had a future before him, and who was so clever and interesting and distinguished-looking.

The girl who had had the singular good fortune to meet him was besieged with questions as to his looks and manner of talking, and personal preferences, to all of which she answered with a fine disregard for facts and a volubility out of all proportion to her knowledge. They wondered whether his play—he had just written one, and the newspapers were saying a great deal about its forthcoming production—would be as interesting as his stories, and they all hoped it would be given in New York during the Christmas holidays, and they declared that they would not miss it for anything.

Only one girl sat silent, her gray eyes bright with scorn—she let them talk on. Their opinions about his looks, and whether he was conceited or only properly sensible of his successes, and whether the report was true that he was going to Japan in the spring, seemed indifferent to her. She sat white and unsmiling through all their girlish enthusiasm and sentimental talk about this unknown god and their ideals and their expectations for the future—and when the photograph, which had been passed from hand to hand, reached her, she let it fall idly in her lap as though she could not bear to touch it. As it lay there, a hard look came into her face. When she glanced up, she found Miss Ronald gazing at her with a curious, petulant expression.

Suddenly she got up and a look of determination was upon her face and in her eyes. Their talk was all very childish and silly, but she could see that beneath their half-laughing manner there was a touch of seriousness. This man, with his fine face and his successes and personal magnetism, had exercised a strange fascination over them, and most of all over the pretty, sentimental girl looking with such a puzzled expression at her.

After all, this girl had been good to her. She would do what she could. She stood tall and straight against the curtains of the window facing the rest and breathing quickly.

“Yes—I know of him,” she said, answering their unspoken inquiry. “You think you know him through his books and the reviews and newspaper notices of him.” Her voice was ringing now and she touched the picture lightly and scornfully with her finger.

“I know him better than that. I know things of him that will not be told in newspaper paragraphs and book reviews.” She paused and her face grew whiter. “You read his stories, and because they are the best of their kind, the most correct, the most interesting, because his men are the men you like to know, men who are always as they should be to men, because there is an atmosphere of refinement and elegance and pleasing conventionality about them—you think they must be the reflex of himself. O yes! I know—the very last story—you have all read it—who could be more magnificent and correct than Roscommon? And you think him like his hero! There is not one of you but would feel flattered at his attentions, you might easily fall in love with him—I dare say you would scarcely refuse him—and yet”—she broke off suddenly.

“There was a girl,” she began after a moment’s hesitation, in a tone from which all the excitement had died, “a friend of mine, and she loved him. Perhaps you do not know that before he became famous he lived in a small Western town—she lived there too. They grew up together, and she was as proud of him—well, you know probably just how proud a girl can be of a boy who has played with her and scolded her and tyrannized over her and protected her and afterward loved her. For he did love her. He told her so a thousand times and he showed it

to her in a thousand ways. And she loved him! I cannot tell you what he was to her.” They were all looking curiously at her white face and she tried to speak still more calmly.

“Well, after a time his ambition—for he was very ambitious and very talented—made him restless. He wanted to go East—he thought he would succeed. She let him go freely, willingly. His success was hers, he said. Everything he was to do was for her, and she let him go, and she told him then that he could be free. But he was very angry. He said that he would never have thought of going but to be better worthy of her. He succeeded—you know—the world knows how well he has succeeded, and the world likes success, and what wonder that he forgot her. She was handsome—at least her friends told her so—but she was not like the girls he knows now. She was not rich, and she had never been used to the life of luxury and worldliness to which he had so quickly accustomed himself. But,” she went on, protestingly, as if in reply to some unspoken argument or some doubt that had assailed her, “she could have been all he wished her. She was quick and good to look at, and well-bred. She could have easily learned the world’s ways—the ways that have become so vital to him.”

She stopped, and then went on with an air of careful impartiality, as if trying to be just, to look at both sides of the question, and her beautiful face grew whiter with the effort.

“But, of course, she was not like the girls he had met. He used to write to her at first how disgusted he was when those elegant young ladies would pet him and make much of him and use him and his time as they did everything else in their beautiful, idle lives. He did not like it, he said; and then I suppose it amused him, and then fascinated him. They would not let him alone. They wanted him to put them in his stories, and he had to go to their dinners and to the opera with them. He said they wanted someone to ‘show off’; and at first he resented it, but little by little he came to like it and to find it the life he had needed and longed for, and to forget and despise the simpler one he had known in his youth——”

She stopped again and pulled nervously at the silk fringe of the curtain, and looked at the strained faces of the girls as if asking them whether she had been just in her way of putting the thing. And then she hurried on.

“And so she released him. He had not been back in two years—not since he had first gone away, and she knew it would be easier to do it

before she saw him again. And so when she heard of his success and how popular he was, and that he was the most talked about of all the younger authors, she wrote him that she could not be his wife. But she loved him, and she let him see it in the letter. She bent her pride that far—and she was a proud girl! She told herself over and over that he was not worthy of her—that success had made a failure of him, but she loved him still and she let him see it. She determined to give him and herself that chance. If he still loved her he would know from that letter that she, too, loved him. Well, his answer—she told me that his answer was very cold and short. That if she wished to give him up he knew she must have some good reason.”

Someone stirred uneasily, and gave a breathless sort of gasp.

“That was hard,” she went on. She was speaking now in an impassive sort of way. “But that was not the hardest. She saw him again. It was not long ago——” She stopped and put one hand to her throat. “She had gone away. She desired to become what he had wished she was, although she could never be anything to him again, and she was succeeding, and thought that perhaps she would forget and be happy. But he found out where she was, and went to her. Something had gone wrong with him. You remember—he was reported to be engaged to a young girl very well known in society—the daughter of a senator, and a great beauty. Well, there was some mistake. He came straight to my friend and told her that he did not know what he had been doing, that she was the only girl he had ever loved and he asked her forgiveness. He told her that his life would be worthless and ruined, that his success would mean less than nothing to him if she did not love him, and he implored her to be what she had once been to him and to marry him.”

Miss Ronald looked up quickly, and the petulant expression in her eyes had given place to a look of disdain.

“What did she say then?” she asked.

The girl shook her head, mournfully.

“She could not,” she said, simply. “She would have given her soul to have been able to say yes, but she could not!”

When the door had quite closed behind her, they sat silent and hushed. Suddenly Miss Ronald walked over to the window, and picking up the photograph where it had fallen, face downward, she tore it into little bits.

AN AQUARELLE

ALLARDYCE felt both aggrieved and bored when he found that his sister had gone off with a walking-party and was not likely to return for an hour or two. He had this unwelcome bit of news from the young woman in cap and gown who had come from the office into the reception-room and was standing before him, glancing every now and then from his face to the card she held, with a severely kind look out of her gray eyes.

“I telegraphed her I was in Boston and would be out,” remarked Allardyce, in an injured tone.

“Yes,” assented the young woman, “Miss Allardyce had left word in the office that she was expecting her brother, but that as he had not come by the 2.30 or 3.10 train, she had concluded he was detained in Boston, and that if he did arrive later he was to wait.” She added that he would be obliged to do so in any case, as there was no express back to Boston for two hours, and that if he would like to see the college while he waited she would send someone to take him over it.

But Allardyce seemed so doubtful as to whether he cared to become better acquainted with the architecture of the college, and so disappointed about it all, that the kindly senior felt sorry for him and suggested sympathetically that he “might amuse himself by strolling through the grounds.” She could not have been over twenty, but she had all the seriousness and responsibility of an undergraduate, and Allardyce suddenly felt very young and foolish in her presence and wondered hotly how old she thought he was, and why she hadn’t told him to “run out and play.” He decided that her idea was a good one, however, so he took his hat and stick and wandered down the south corridor to the piazza. Standing there he could see the lake and the many private boats lying in the bend of the shore, each fastened to its little dock, and beyond, the boat-house with the class practice-barges, slim and long, just visible in the cool darkness beneath. He thought it all looked very inviting, and there was a rustic bench under a big tree half-way down the hill where he could smoke and get a still better view of the water.

So he settled himself quite comfortably, lit a cigarette, and looked gloomily out over the lake. He assured himself bitterly that after having been abroad for so many years, and after having inconvenienced himself by taking a boat to Boston instead of a Cunarder to New York—his natural destination—in order to see his sister, that she was extremely unkind not to have waited for him. He was deep in the mental composition of a most reproachful note to her when he discovered that by closing his eyes a little and looking intently at the Italian Gardens on the opposite side of the water, he could easily fancy himself at a little place he knew on Lake Maggiore. This afforded him amusement for a while, but it soon palled on him, and he was beginning to wonder moodily how he was ever to get through two hours of the afternoon, when he saw a young girl come out of the boat-house with a pair of sculls and make her way to one of the little boats. She leaned over it, and Allardyce could see that she was trying to fit a key into the padlock which fastened the boat to its dock, and that after several attempts to undo it she looked rather hopelessly at the lock and heavy chain. He went quickly down the hill and along the shore. He was suddenly extremely glad that he was in America, where he could be permitted to speak to and help a girl, even if a total stranger, without having his assistance interpreted as an insult.

“I beg your pardon,” he said, lifting his hat. “Can I be of any help?”

The girl looked up a little startled, but when she saw the tall, good-looking youth, she smiled in a relieved sort of way and rose quickly from her knees.

“Indeed, yes,” she said, without any embarrassment. “I can’t unlock this; perhaps you can.”

Allardyce took the key, and kneeling down fitted it in its place and turned it with very little effort. The girl looked rather ruefully at him as he jumped up.

“Thank you,” she said in a politely distant way. “I don’t see why I could not have done that. I am very strong in my hands, too.”

Allardyce smiled indulgently. All girls were under the impression that they were strong. At any rate this one was tremendously pretty, he decided—much prettier than the stately senior he had encountered up at the college, and he was glad there were no cap and gown this time. He was aware, of course, that he ought to lift his hat and move on, and not stand there staring at her, but his previous solicitude had made him feel sociable.

“Perhaps you will let me put the oars in for you,” he suggested. He was rather alarmed after he had spoken, but when he glanced at the girl to see how she had taken his further self-invited assistance he found her looking at him in a very friendly way. All at once he felt quite elated and at his ease. It had been a long while since he had had much to do with American girls, and he concluded that all that had been said about their charming freedom and cordiality of manner had not been exaggerated. But when he had put the sculls in the boat it occurred to him that it would not do to presume too far on that freedom and cordiality, and that if he was not to depart immediately—and he felt no inclination to do so—he must offer some sort of explanation of himself.

“I am waiting for my sister,” he remarked genially.

“Oh! your sister,” echoed the girl.

“Yes—Miss Allardyce. Perhaps you are in the same class,” he hazarded.

She looked at him for a moment in a slightly surprised way, and then out across the water, and Allardyce saw, as she turned her head away from him, that she was smiling.

“No,” she said slowly, “but I know her quite well.”

“Ah! I’m glad of that,” said the young man, boldly and cheerfully. “Now I feel quite as if I had been properly introduced! ‘Les amis de nos amis,’ you know!”

The girl smiled back at him. “I am Miss Brent. By the way, your sister has the distinction of being the only Allardyce in college. It’s a rather unusual name.”

“Yes,” assented Allardyce, delightedly. “Scotch, you know.” And then in a sudden burst of confidence—“My people were Scotch and French. I have been educated abroad and have come home for the law course at the University. Awfully glad to be in America again, too, for, after all, I am an American through and through.” He pulled himself up sharply in some confusion and amusement at his unusual loquacity.

But the girl before him did not seem to find it strange, and was quite interested and politely attentive.

“And where is your sister?” she demanded.

“Oh, that’s the essential, and I forgot to mention it,” he replied, laughing a little and digging his stick into the soft earth. “She’s gone off walking!” and then he went on insinuatingly and plaintively—“And I don’t know a soul here—never was here before in my life—and there’s no train to Boston, and I have to wait two hours for her!”

The young woman smiled sympathetically. “That’s too bad,” she said, and then she looked doubtfully at Allardyce. He seemed very young and to be having a rather bad time of it, and there is an unwritten law at the college which constitutes every member of it the natural protector and entertainer of lost or bored strangers.

“I am going across the lake for water-lilies,” she went on after a little hesitation. “If you care to come you may, and pull me about while I gather them. It is hard work to do it alone.”

“You are very kind,” said Allardyce promptly, “and it is very nice of you to put it that way. It will be a great favor to me to let me go.”

He rowed her across the water in the direction of the Italian Gardens, and they found a good deal to say to each other, and she seemed very unaffected and friendly, although Allardyce fancied once or twice that when she replied to some of his remarks her voice trembled in an odd way as if she were secretly amused. But he thought her delightful, and he was very much obliged to her for taking him off his hands in this way, though he could not help feeling some surprise at her invitation. Of course he could not imagine such a thing happening to him on the Continent. No French or German girl would have the chance or enough savoir faire to treat him as this girl was treating him. He told her all this in more veiled terms when they had reached the water-lilies, and he had turned around in his seat and was carefully balancing the boat while she pulled the dripping, long-stemmed flowers. Miss Brent laughed outright at his remarks, and Allardyce laughed good-naturedly too, although what he had said did not strike him as being at all amusing. But he was glad that she was so easily diverted. He reflected that perhaps her invitation had not been entirely disinterested—that she considered it as stupid to go out rowing alone, as he did to wander around the college without his sister—and that as she had been kind enough to save him from a solitary afternoon, it was his part to be as amusing and entertaining as possible.

“You must not consider us in the light of very young girls,” she explained. “You know this is a woman’s college.”

“That’s what is so nice,” returned Allardyce confidently. “You are girls with the brains and attainments of women. That is a very delightful combination.” He gave her an openly admiring, rather patronizing glance. He did not mean to be superior or condescending, but he reflected that in spite of her ease of manner she was yet in college, and so must be very young. He seemed to himself to be quite old and world-worn in comparison.

Miss Brent looked over at the college towering up on the other side of the lake.

“How do you like it?” she asked politely, after a moment’s silence.

“Oh, I didn’t see anything of it,” replied Allardyce easily, leaning his elbows comfortably on the unshipped oars. “I got my walking papers promptly from a young woman up there, and so I left. She rather frightened me, you know,” he ran on. “Awfully severe-looking, cap and gown, and that sort of thing. I thought if that was only an undergraduate I didn’t want to encounter any of the teachers—professors, I believe you call them—and so I fled. You do have women professors, don’t you?” he inquired with a great deal of awe.

“Yes,” said the girl.

“Well—they must be pretty awful,” he said cheerfully, after a moment’s pause.

The girl straightened up cautiously, pulling at the rubber-like stem of an immense lily.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said carelessly. She was bending over the side of the boat, and Allardyce could not see her face; but he heard the laugh in her voice again. “There! there’s a boutonnière for you.”

Allardyce caught the lily she swung toward him by the stem, and stuck it in his coat.

“I suppose that’s about the size of the Russian Giant’s button-hole flower,” he remarked frivolously. They were quite good friends now. Allardyce looked over at the college again.

“You must find it pretty slow up there,” he said confidentially. “Can’t imagine how you girls exist. You ought to go to a Paris boarding-school. You can have no end of fun there, you know.” He was nodding his head enthusiastically at her. “I have a cousin at one in the Avenue Marceau. Went to see her just before I sailed and it was tremendously amusing. These French girls are awful flirts! When I went away every girl in that school came to the windows and looked at me. It was rather trying, but I felt that for once I knew what popularity was!”

Miss Brent buried her face in the biggest lily of the bunch.

“And—and what did you do?” she inquired, in suppressed tones.

“Oh—I? Why I bowed and smiled at the whole lot. Must have looked rather like an idiot, now I come to think of it; and my cousin wrote me she got into no end of trouble about it. One of the maîtresses happened to see me. But it was great fun while it lasted. And after all where is the harm of a little flirting?” he concluded, judicially.

“Where indeed?” assented the girl, with a laugh.

“That’s right—I am glad to hear you say that,” broke in Allardyce, approvingly. “There’s something wrong with a woman who doesn’t cry or flirt—it’s a part of her nature,” he went on, with the air of having made a profoundly philosophic discovery. “You know you agree with me,” he urged, insinuatingly.

She shook her head.

“Personally I don’t know,” she said; “you see I am so busy——”

“Oh! I say,” cried Allardyce, “you don’t mean you study as hard as that! Of course,” he added impartially, “it’s all very well for some girls to grind—” he stopped in alarm as the girl drew herself up slightly.

“I hope my sister doesn’t study too much,” he hastened to add, lamely.

Miss Brent put her handkerchief suddenly to her lips, which were trembling with laughter.

“I don’t think you need worry!” she said.

Allardyce was considerably mystified and a little offended.

“But she’s very bright,” added the girl, quickly; “especially in mathematics, where I see most of her; but I believe she is not a very hard student.”

“Well,” said Allardyce, jocosely; “I’ll tell you a secret. I am the hard student of the family, and that’s much better than that my sister should be, I think. I don’t approve of girls working too hard. It makes them old—takes away their freshness—especially if they go in for mathematics. Do you know I have never been able to imagine a girl mathematician anyway,” he ran on, confidentially. “Always seemed like a sort of joke. Now there was that English girl—what was her name, who was worse than a senior wrangler? Her photographs were just everywhere. I was in Cambridge that summer and they were in all the shop-windows, and I would stop and look carefully to see if they were not different from the ones I had seen the day before. For they were quite pretty you know, and I was always hoping that there was some mistake and that they had got some other young woman, entirely innocent, mixed up with her.”

There was so much genuine distress in his tone that Miss Brent made an heroic attempt not to laugh.

“Well,” she exclaimed, “don’t say that—some people think I am good at mathematics myself.”

Allardyce shook his head at her. “I’m sure it’s a mistake—you are trying to impose on me,” he said, with mock severity. “At any rate I am glad my sister is guiltless of any such accusation. We are under the impression that she goes in for a good time at college—at least one would suppose so from her letters. I got one from her just before I left Paris in which she gave me a very amusing account of some blow-out here—some class function or other, and she seemed dreadfully afraid that the faculty would get hold of the details. She says you stand tremendously in awe of your faculty. Wait a minute—I’ve got the letter here somewhere,” he went on, fumbling in his pockets. “Didn’t think much of the affair considered in the light of a scrape, but she seemed to think it exciting and dangerous to the last degree. That’s where you girls are so funny—you think you are doing something immensely wrong and it is just nothing at all. I see I haven’t the letter with me; but perhaps you were in it all and know a great deal more about it than I do.”

Miss Brent suddenly twisted herself around in the boat, and reached for an especially big lily.

“No—” she said, “I—I don’t think I was there. Will you pull a little on the left oar—a little more, please. It’s that lily I want!”

“There’s another thing about girls,” resumed Allardyce meditatively and kindly, when the boat had straightened back. “You seem to think it a terrible calamity, a disgrace, to get plucked in an examination. Now a man takes it philosophically. Of course, it isn’t a thing one especially cares to have happen one; but it doesn’t destroy a fellow’s interest in life, nor make him feel particularly ashamed of himself. He just goes to work with a tutor and hopes for better luck next time. That’s the best way to take it, don’t you think? But perhaps you don’t know anything about it. Ever get plucked?—I beg your pardon,” he added hastily.

But the girl did not appear at all offended.

“Oh, you mustn’t ask that,” she said, leaning back and laughing at him; “at any rate,” she added, with an air of careful consideration, “I don’t think I ever got ‘plucked’ in—mathematics. And now you must take me back.”

Allardyce gave a shudder of mock horror. “Oh, mathematics!” he said, picking up the oars.

When they were half-way across the lake Allardyce saw a young girl standing on the shore waving at them.

“Why,” he said, looking intently at the figure, “I believe it is my sister.”

Miss Brent leaned forward.

“Yes, it is your sister,” she said slowly, and she smiled a little.

Miss Allardyce kissed her brother with a great show of affection, and told him how sorry she was to have missed him. “And I am sure it was very good of you to have taken care of him,” she went on impressively and gratefully, turning to Miss Brent. But that young lady disclaimed any merit.

“We’ve had a delightful afternoon,” she declared, “and your brother has been very good to pull me about and keep the boat from tipping over, while I gathered these lilies. I am very glad to have met him. Good afternoon.”

“Charming girl!” murmured Allardyce, appreciatively, digging his stick in the earth, and leaning on it as he looked after Miss Brent.

“We had an awfully jolly time together,” he went on, to the girl beside him; “sort of water-picnic, without the picnic.”

Miss Allardyce looked sharply at her brother. Something in his manner made her anxious. “How did you meet her?” she demanded.

“Oh! that’s the best part,” said Allardyce joyously. “Wasn’t introduced at all. I offered to unlock her boat for her, and I liked her looks so much that I hated to go away, so I asked her if she was in your class, and she said ‘No,’ but that she knew you, and that I considered was introduction enough. We just went off together and had a very good time. Lucky for me that somebody took me up when my own sister went off and left me,” he added reproachfully.

Miss Allardyce shook her head impatiently. “Never mind about me.” She looked anxiously at her brother. “What did you say to her?”

“Oh! I don’t remember exactly;” he replied vaguely and cheerfully. “We talked a good deal—at least I did,” with a sudden realization of how he had monopolized the conversation. “About French boarding-schools and women professors and getting plucked in examinations, and I told her about that scrape you wrote me of. She hasn’t a bit of nonsense about her,” he went on enthusiastically. “She didn’t say much, but I am sure she agreed with me that girls are by nature flirts, and not mathematicians.”

Miss Allardyce gave a little gasp. “Well,” she said, with a sort of desperate calmness, “you’ve done it now! Do you know who that was you were talking to? That was the assistant-professor of mathematics. Oh! yes, I know she looks awfully young, and she is young. I suppose you think a woman has to be fifty before she knows anything. Why she only took her degree two years ago, and she was so tremendously clever that she went off and studied a year in Leipsic and then came back as instructor in mathematics, and this year when one of the assistant-professors was called suddenly to Europe, she was made assistant-professor in her place, and they say she’s been a most wonderful success. And I know she is pretty; but that doesn’t prevent her examinations from being terrors, and I didn’t get through the last one at all, and if you told her about that scrape, and that women ought not to be mathematicians——” she stopped breathlessly and in utter despair.

Allardyce whistled softly and then struck his stick sharply against the side of the little dock. “Well,” he exclaimed indignantly, “she’s most deceitfully young and pretty,” and then he turned reproachfully upon his sister. “It’s all your fault,” he said; “what did you go off walking for?”

“LA BELLE HÉLÈNE”

Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, Rhinebeck-on-Hudson

Baltimore, October 20th.

MY DEAREST ALMA: As we have been confiding our joys and woes to each other for the last twenty-five years, it is to you I naturally write about this new trial which has come into my life. You will probably think it peu de chose, but I assure you, my dear, that if you really and truly put yourself in my place you will realize that it is an annoyance. Henry’s child has at last written to me that she “has finished her studies for the present” (!) and is coming to America to spend the winter with us. You must see, Alma, that this is slightly appalling. I have never seen her—not since she was a little thing with enormous gray eyes and a freckled nose—and I know absolutely nothing about her except what Henry wrote me from time to time, when he stopped his eternal wanderings long enough to remember he had a sister. But judging by the education he gave her—and I consider it simply deplorable—and the evident taste she had for it, and later for “the higher education of woman,” I feel distressingly positive that I cannot approve of the child. I am very sorry now that I did not make an effort to go to her when her father died in England, five years ago, but she wrote me that she had friends there who were doing everything for her, and that she was coming directly to America to enter college according to her father’s wishes, and that there was really no need to disturb myself about her. I could see, Alma, the effect of the independent, strange existence she had led, in that letter. It repelled me. Now, Eleanor, I am sure, would have been completely prostrated, the dear child!

So she came directly to Boston, and I, being so busy with my own preparations for taking Eleanor and Margaret to Paris, simply could not arrange to go on to Boston to see her. As of course you know, we remained abroad four years, and last year, when we returned and I expected to see Helen at last, she wrote me a letter which I got just before leaving Paris, saying that she had decided to go to Oxford for a year to take a course in mathematical astronomy at the Lady Margaret Hall. So we passed each other in mid-ocean.

Fancy, Alma! I knew when I read that letter what kind of a girl she was. One of your hard students, engrossed in books, without one thought for dress or social manners! I am afraid she will prove a severe trial. And just when Eleanor is counting on having such a gay second winter and Margaret is to début. It is a little hard, is it not, dear? Thank Heaven, I shall never have to blame myself as Henry would have to do if he were alive. At least I have seen to it that my daughters have had the education which will fit them to ornament society, the education that I still believe in notwithstanding all this talk of colleges for women and advancement in learning, and college settlements and extensions, and Heaven knows what besides!

My girls have had first, the best of training at Mrs. Meed’s, and then four years at Les Oiseaux, you know. They speak French perfectly, of course, and Margaret has even tried Italian and German. They both ride and drive well, and Eleanor plays and sings very sweetly. But what is the use of my telling you about them when you know them so well?

I only wish, Alma, you could tell me something about Helen! Just think, I have never even seen a photograph of her! It is one of her fads not to have them taken, from which I argue that she is very homely, very opinionated, and very strange. Eleanor has two dozen in different poses, I am sure. The only information I have at all about Helen’s looks is from Margaret, who saw her for an hour in Brookline—it was five years ago—just before we sailed. She had run up to see a Boston friend for a few days, and of course she was very young and has probably forgotten, but she insists that Helen was rather pretty. However, I do not attach the least importance to what Margaret says, because, as you know, she is so good-natured that she always says the best of everyone; and then her tastes are sometimes really deplorable—so unlike Eleanor’s! Besides, her description of Helen does not sound like that of a pretty girl. She says she wore her hair parted and back from her face, and was slightly near-sighted. Think of it, Alma! For the hair, encore passe, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Wenzell have made that so much the fashion lately that one might forgive it; but short-sighted! Eye-glasses! Spectacles perhaps! Hard study since may have completely ruined her eyes. I greatly fear she will show up very badly beside Eleanor’s piquant beauty and Margaret’s freshness.

She writes me that she will be here in a month, so that it is time I was seriously considering what I am to do with her. Of course, with the severe education she has had, she probably dislikes society and could not be induced to go out, knowing well that she could not shine in it; but as my brother’s child she must be at least introduced properly, and she can then subside gracefully. Of course, where there are two such attractive girls in the house as Eleanor and Margaret, she cannot hope to compete in social honors with them, and will probably much prefer in any case to continue her studies or go in for charitable work, or something of that sort.

My dear Alma, I have just read over this letter and am shocked to see how much I have written about this affair. Forgive me if I have wearied you and—yes, do give me some good advice.

Are you going to Carlsbad?

The girls are out of town for a few days, or would send love as I do.

Very affectionately yours,
Marian Morrison.

P.S. They say a woman cannot write a letter without a postscript, and I believe it! Tell me what to do about H. How had I best introduce her to society? Don’t you think a dinner—where she could sit beside someone whom I could especially choose as suited to her—and where she would not be too much en évidence? A dance would not do at all—I doubt if she can dance, poor girl!

M. M.

Mrs. Franklin Bennett to Mrs. Olmsted Morrison.

October 22d.

My Dearest Marian: How could you think me so cold-blooded as to consider such a piece of news as your letter contains “peu de chose”? I feel for you, I assure you. What a dilemma! The dear girls! how do they like the idea? Margaret, as you say, will probably not mind, but Eleanor—so exquisitely pretty and stylish! It will be rather a thorn in the flesh, I imagine. O! how I wish I had children—two such lovely girls as yours would make life a different thing for me!

Of course, the dinner. How could you think of anything else! Invite some of the professors from the University for her, and have the rest of the company of young society people, so that Eleanor and Margaret can enjoy it too.

Oh, my dear, I would like to write a long, long letter about this, but I am in such confusion and hurry! Mr. Bennett has been ordered to Wiesbaden for the winter, and we sail in a week. I wish I could be in Baltimore to help you, but it is impossible, of course. I count on your writing me all your plans, and just how Helen appears, and whether it is all as dreadful as you now fear. Address to the Langham Hotel until November 25th, after that, care Brown, Shipley, as usual. Good-by. I have a thousand things to tell you of, but must put them off until I reach London and have a moment to myself.

As ever,
Devotedly yours,
A. B.

P.S. Don’t look too much on the dark side of things. I knew a Philadelphia girl once—the niece of old Colonel Devereaux you know—and she was rather pretty and quite good form, though a college girl. I think, however, she had been but one year to college.

A. B.

Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, the Langham Hotel, London, W. C.

Baltimore, November 15th.

Dearest Alma: Your note, which was so welcome and which came so long ago, would have had an earlier answer had I not been a little sick, and so busy and worried that I have not had time or heart to write even to you. So you can imagine in what a state I am.

The girls came back to town shortly after I last wrote you, and we held a sort of family council about Helen. The dear girls were charming, and Eleanor bore it very bravely. She says she will give Helen hints about her hair, and will implore her not to wear spectacles, but rimless eye-glasses.

We are very much worried about her gowns. Of course her own taste is not to be depended upon, and I hardly fancy her income would justify her in leaving her toilette entirely with a grande couturière, even if she would dream of doing such a thing, which I very much doubt. Her father, you know, left the bulk of his fortune to found a library in Westchester. He always said he never intended to leave Helen enough to tempt anyone to marry her for her money. Poor Henry—what a strange, misguided man! But then, of course, he could not foresee that his daughter would be an ugly duckling, and strong-minded and college-bred, and all that. Oh, yes, of course he must have known about the college. But at any rate, man-like, he did not realize how unattractive Helen would be.

Well, as I say, we talked it over, and the girls agree with me that the best thing is a dinner. Eleanor was for having it a small affair. She said it would be truer kindness to Helen, but Margaret, who is very blunt sometimes, I am sorry to say, said she thought “we ought to give Helen a chance,” as she rather vulgarly expressed it, and insisted so strongly on it that we gave in, and have decided to have a dinner, and invite some of Eleanor’s friends later to a small dance. This will relieve Eleanor of some of her more pressing social obligations, and she will also be able to introduce Margaret to some of her particular set before she makes her formal début later in the season. A débutante cannot have too many friends.

And so, after talking it over, we determined to invite Professor Radnor, of the University. He is a comparatively young man—about forty-five, I judge—and though far from handsome he is considered very interesting, I believe, to those who understand him. He is of good family, too—one of the Radnors of Cliff Hill, you know. He and Helen can talk biology or whatever it is he professes—I really forget what it is. Then there is Colonel Gray—I shall invite him because he was an old friend of her father, and though very grumpy and disagreeable, and apt to bore one to death with his interminable war stories, still I always invite him to the house once a year, and he is to be depended upon to come; and indeed, Alma, I am so perplexed to know whom to invite that I really cannot pick and choose. Then I think I shall have the new rector at “All Souls.” He is a young man, an Englishman, and as stupid as the proverbial Britisher; very high church, and as I have not yet invited him to dinner, I think the choice of him rather diplomatic. It really has been too much of an exertion to get up a dinner-party for him alone, and indeed Eleanor cannot bear him, she says; but with her usual sweetness has consented to have him come if Helen and Margaret will take him off her hands. He and Helen will doubtless find much to say to each other about Dr. Bernardo, and the People’s Palace, and that sort of thing. I think with these three I can safely let the girls take care of the rest, and invite younger people who will be congenial to them. I say younger people, for Helen must be twenty-three or four, and she will doubtless seem much older and graver. You see I shall be prepared; I know this will be an ordeal, but I mean to do the best for her that I can. I shall have everything as handsome as possible—the girls are particularly anxious about it—as Eleanor proposes asking young Claghart, the new artist, you know, who is making such a name for himself.

Helen will be here in a week. I shall send out the invitations in a day or two, so as to have no refusals—dinner engagements are already getting numerous. I shall let you know all about Helen and the dinner-party. I know you are as interested as myself in this, and that you sympathize with me. Poor Henry! to think that he should have given me a niece who has spent the best years of her life shut up in colleges, and ruining health and looks in sedentary, intellectual pursuits!

The Kinglakes were here yesterday and send their kindest regards to you. Good-by! A thousand best wishes for a happy trip. Do tell Mr. Bennett how much I hope he will be improved by Wiesbaden.

Write soon to your devoted friend,

Marian M.

Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Colonel Ralph Gray.

My Dear Colonel: Of course it is to you, Henry’s oldest friend, that I write first to tell the charming news that his daughter Helen is coming to us in a week. She has “finished her studies for the present,” so she writes, and we are at last to see the dear child. We are delighted to have her come, and feel that she must meet you at once. You will certainly find her to your taste, as she is so highly educated and not at all like these society girls whom you justly condemn as utterly frivolous.

We have arranged a little dinner-party for Thursday, the twenty-fourth, and positively count on you to come and put us all in a good humor with one of your inimitable war stories.

Most cordially your friend,
Marian V. Morrison.

Friday, November the eighteenth.

Mrs. Morrison to the Reverend Percival Beaufort.

My Dear Mr. Beaufort: Will you give us the great pleasure of seeing you at dinner on Thursday evening, at half-past eight? Only severe illness has kept me from asking this favor long ago, so that I very much hope nothing will prevent your accepting now. Eleanor tells me to remind you that the Young People’s Guild has been changed to Wednesday evening, so at least that will not interfere with your acceptance. If you come, virtue will not be its own reward in this case. I have a niece whom I am particularly anxious you should meet. She is intensely interested in all charities—especially London charities—and is very quiet and charming, if not exactly pretty. But I am sure you agree with me that beauty is often only a snare!

The girls particularly wish to be remembered.

Most truly yours,
Marian V. Morrison.

Friday, November the eighteenth.

Mrs. Morrison to Professor Albert Radnor, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore.

November the eighteenth.

My Dear Professor Radnor: Can we persuade you to abandon your lectures and experiments long enough to dine with us on the evening of the twenty-fourth? I know we are very frivolous and not at all the people to interest you, however much you interest us, but I fancy I shall have someone here whom you will be glad to meet. I want you to know my niece, Miss Helen Hammersley. She is an immensely clever girl—has taken her degree at one of our famous women’s colleges, and has just returned from a year of Oxford and the Bodleian, so that I feel reasonably sure she will be able to listen intelligently to you, at any rate. She is greatly interested in your specialty, and will certainly esteem it the greatest privilege to meet such a noted authority on the subject as yourself.

I will take no excuse.

Very sincerely your friend,
Marian V. Morrison.

Miss Eleanor Morrison to Miss Grace Fairfax, Washington, D. C.

November 19th.

Dearest Grace: We are sending out invitations to dinner and small dance afterward in honor of a cousin of ours, Helen Hammersley, who is coming from England to spend the winter with us, and of course we thought of you first and foremost. You must come and save the situation with your brilliancy and tact. There! can you refuse me after that? To tell you the truth, dear, we are all awfully worried about the whole thing. We none of us know Helen at all, and we are simply au désespoir about her because she is such a strange girl. She has been at college for five years—first in America and then at Oxford, and we all feel miserably sure of what an impossible sort of girl she is. She even took some sort of honor in mathematics at Oxford—just fancy! What she is going to be like in a ball-room no mortal can guess! So we have done the best we can—mamma has invited some old fogies to entertain her, and I propose we make our end of the table as much of a shining contrast as possible. I shall ask that Canadian you adore so—Reggie Montrose—for you, and your brother Jerry for Margaret, and shall reserve Wayne Claghart for myself; so please take warning and let that youth severely alone. He is my especial property, and I consider him simply the nicest man I know. He has hinted two or three times that he would like to sketch my head. He needn’t be afraid of my refusing, if he’d only ask me outright! I shall tell Helen, of course, that I asked him because he has lately returned from England, and she has just returned, etc., etc., but I’m afraid he’ll be so far away from her and she’ll be so busy talking theologies with Professor Radnor (forgot to tell you mamma has asked him!), and the East End with Percy Beaufort, that I don’t think she’ll have a chance to stun him with her learning. Besides, I don’t think he is the man to devote much time to that sort of a girl.

Now, don’t disappoint me! I count on you. Later there will be a lot of people in—the usual crowd, you know—and if you’ll say positively you’ll come, we will make it a small cotillon and you shall lead with Reggie.

I’ll let Margaret write to Jerry—they are such chums, but you be sure and make him come. Don’t, for Heaven’s sake, let him know about Helen’s homeliness and flabbergastering attainments, or he won’t stir a foot.

Good-by. Expect you down Wednesday. Telegraph me you will come.

As ever,
Eleanor.

Miss Eleanor Morrison to Reginald Montrose, Esq., Murray Hill Hotel, New York City.

November 19th.

Dear Mr. Montrose: Thank you so much for that lovely philopena present. How charming of you to have thought of that! Won’t you take dinner with us next Thursday, at half after eight, and let me thank you in person? After dinner you may dance the cotillon with Miss Fairfax. There! is not that an inducement? I have a cousin whom I want you to meet, too—she is just returning to America and is very learned, and not quite your style, I fear, but she will doubtless be good for you after me!

Most cordially yours,
Eleanor Morrison.

Miss Eleanor Morrison to Wayne Claghart, Esq., Twenty-third Street, New York City.

Saturday, November 19th.

Dear Mr. Claghart: Do you remember your promise to run down to Baltimore? Well, I shall expect you to keep it next Thursday. We are to have a little dinner and a dance afterward (perhaps I should say a dinner and a little dance—no, the adjective belongs to both), and I shall certainly expect you to be on hand. Your fame has preceded you, of course, and a great many very nice young women are simply existing on the thought of meeting Mr. Wayne Claghart, the artist! Shall I reserve the very prettiest and nicest of them all to dance the cotillon with you?

Hoping to see you without fail,

Very sincerely yours,
Eleanor Morrison.

Miss Margaret Morrison to Mr. Jeré Fairfax, Washington, D. C.

November 19th.

Dear Jerry: Eleanor has a dinner on for next Thursday, and we want you to throw over all your numerous engagements for that evening and come to us. Do, Jerry—and favor me a lot—I forgot to say there was a german afterward—and be generally nice to your débutante, Margot. As an inducement I will say that we’ve got a jolly surprise for you. Eleanor don’t want me to tell, but I’m going to. Our cousin, Helen Hammersley, is coming to spend the winter with us—it’s for her the dinner is being given—and mamma and Eleanor are in despair about her. I don’t believe she’s half bad, but they say she’s awfully ugly, and too smart to be nice. I suppose she is awfully erudite—is that the word? Wears specs, and dresses like everything, I suppose. Wonder if she ever danced the german—she can have a sprained ankle if she don’t know how.

As ever,
Margaret.

Telegram—Miss Grace Fairfax to Miss Eleanor Morrison, Baltimore.

Washington, November 20th.

Delighted to come. Charmed to lead with R. Have two new figures. Order little French flags for one set favors.

Grace.

Telegram—Miss Grace Fairfax to Miss Eleanor Morrison.

Washington, November 22d.

Terrible attack tonsillitis. Doctor says positively cannot go.

Grace.

Miss Eleanor Morrison to Miss Marie de Rochemont, Charles Street.

My Dear Miss de Rochemont: Much to my surprise and annoyance I have this moment found an invitation which I thought had been mailed to you several days ago. It must have slipped out of the other notes some way and has been lying under some papers here on my desk ever since. Can you forgive this mischance and accept so tardy an invitation? It will give us all the greatest pleasure to see you at half after eight. I especially want to introduce to you a cousin of mine just returned from the other side. She has been in college all her life, and I want her to meet some of our most charming society girls to rub her shyness off and make her take more interest in social life. Perhaps you may convert her! Hoping that no previous engagement will prevent our seeing you Thursday,

Most sincerely yours,
Eleanor Morrison.

Mrs. Olmsted Morrison to Mrs. Franklin Bennett, care of Brown, Shipley & Co., London.

November 25th.

My Dear Alma: What a surprise! I can scarcely collect my thoughts sufficiently to write intelligently on the subject. I really was never more surprised in all my life—more intensely and thoroughly surprised. But I must try and tell you connectedly all about it. To begin with—Helen did not come on the twentieth as we had expected, but telegraphed us that she was detained in Boston and would not reach Baltimore until the morning of the twenty-fourth. This was very annoying, as I was most anxious about her gown for the dinner, and then I imagined that she would be utterly dragged out after travelling all night. Dear Eleanor would have been, I am quite sure. But Helen seems to be one of those distressingly healthy people—no nerves, no sensitiveness. She quite laughed when I asked her if she were not tired!

Well—she came on the eleven-five train, and, Alma, she is not at all the kind of person I had expected. She is even handsome after a certain style of her own—not one that I admire—not at all Eleanor’s style. But certainly it could be much worse. The men even seemed to find her quite good-looking. She has certainly preserved her complexion wonderfully well—and as for her being short-sighted! Between ourselves I am sure it is only an excuse for using a very beautiful lorgnon, and for looking rather intently at one in a sort of meditative way which I consider rather offensive, but which Percy Beaufort told me he found most attractive. He is very disappointing, by the way; I had expected so much of him, but I find him quite an ordinary young man.

I was really shocked at Helen’s levity. I had expected from her superior education that her mind would be above trivialities, but the way she laughed and seemed to enjoy the conversation of Reggie Montrose and Jerry Fairfax! and if she had confined her attentions to those boys! But, Alma, she even tried to infatuate Colonel Gray and Professor Radnor! Two such men! She is far from being the quiet, thoughtful student I had expected to so enjoy. Why, she had the audacity to say to Colonel Gray, after one of his irascible explosions at things in general—“My dear Colonel, you are a living example of squaring the circle—quite round yet full of angles!” You know how rotund the Colonel is, Alma. Think of it! To Colonel Gray, whose irritability is simply proverbial. And he actually seemed to enjoy it! Men of a certain age seem to be only too willing to make fools of themselves if a young girl looks at them. And Percival Beaufort, who is so interested in London charities, could not extract one word from her on the subject, I believe; at any rate I distinctly heard her giving him an animated account of the last “Eights Week,” and he was inquiring solicitously who was the coxswain for Magdalen! Even Professor Radnor seemed to lose his head, though I believe she talked more sensibly to him than to the others, for he told me that she was one of the few women he had ever met who seemed to thoroughly understand Abel’s demonstration of the impossibility of solving a quintic equation by means of radicals—whatever that means.

By the way, we need not have worried about her gown at all. It was quite presentable, and had in it a quantity of rare old point d’Alençon which Helen says Henry picked up in Paris. It quite vexed me to think that I have none of that pattern—it is especially beautiful.

Eleanor would add a word, but she is feeling quite ill this morning, dear child! She was so worried over the dinner. At the very last moment Grace Fairfax failed her, and she was obliged to invite Marie de Rochemont in her place. We were especially sorry that Grace could not come, and that Jerry did. He is getting completely spoiled; his assurance and inconsiderateness are truly wonderful.

By the way, we have changed our plans for the winter slightly. We are going to the Bermudas for a month, and Helen will visit friends in Boston for the rest of the winter. Write soon and let me know how Mr. Bennett is feeling. Address here, all our mail will be forwarded.

As ever, your devoted friend,
Marian Morrison.

Mr. Jeré Fairfax to Miss Grace Fairfax, Washington, D. C.

Baltimore, November 25th.

Dear Grace: I suppose I’ve got to keep my solemn promise to write to you all about the blow-out, though it’s an awful effort for me to write letters, and I’m so razzle-dazzled too! You simply weren’t in it! She’s stunning! The fellows all call her “La Belle Hélène.” Claghart started the name and it took like wildfire. The fair Eleanor is furious. She looked perfectly insignificant by the side of that magnificent creature. What the dickens did Margaret mean by her letter? Why, Helen Hammersley is a perfect beauty. It isn’t good to spring a surprise like that on a fellow. Bad for one’s nerves. Claghart is terribly shaken. Found out she had met ever so many celebrated artists, English and French, and they jawed for hours. Fact is Claghart’s got the cinch on the rest of us because she’s so awfully interested in art—I heard her tell him so. Oh! I almost forgot to tell you the joke! You see, Mrs. Morrison had put her up at her end of the table, with the rector of All Souls on one side of her—the old duffer!—and that fossil, Professor Radnor, on the other, and of all people in the world that ante-bellum specimen, Colonel Ralph Gray, opposite! Think of that, with Montrose and Claghart and myself at the other end, cut off from her by half a dozen married people! Think of the injustice, the tactlessness of such a proceeding! Well, I simply determined to shake things up a bit, so after the bird I said, as sweetly as only yours truly can say, “Mrs. Morrison, I was at the Dwights’ the other evening to a progressive dinner-party. Charming idea, don’t you think?” I knew all the men would back me up, and sure enough Reggie Montrose sang out, “Yes, indeed, Mrs. Morrison! Why not try it to-night?” and before the words were fairly out of his mouth, Claghart had jumped up with his wine-glass and his napkin in his hand, and was moving up one seat nearer “La Belle Hélène.” Of course there was an awful muss and Eleanor was furious, I could see, but she pulled herself together and smiled awfully sweetly at Claghart. Marie de Rochemont turned perfectly green—give you my word of honor. Margaret was the only one who seemed really not to mind. She’s a nice little thing, but she won’t have much show in society if Helen Hammersley is around.

I wish I could tell you about “La Belle Hélène,” but I’m not much for descriptions. She’s different from any girl I ever knew—not very tall, but awfully good figure—fixes her hair like those stunning girls of Gibson’s you know, and she’s got a way of looking at a fellow—earnest and yet half laughing—that’s enough to drive one out of one’s senses. She’s got that je ne sais quoi, you know—something awfully fetching and magnetic and all that sort of thing. (You’ll think me a drivelling idiot!) She wore a beauty of a gown, white satin—or gauze, I’m not sure which. Was going to ask Claghart—being an artist he’s up to such fine distinctions—but forgot it. I say, Grace, why don’t your gowns look like that? You’d better ask her who built hers. Tell you what, she’s just fascinating—not stiff or uppish a bit, but she’s got a certain sort of dignity you girls don’t seem to acquire, some way or other.

She simply hoodooed old Gray, not to mention Percy Beaufort, the Professor, and several dozen others, including your devoted brother. There was one solemn moment at the cotillion when every man in the room was around her. The other girls looked black, I promise you! What the deuce, Grace, makes you girls so jealous? I actually believe Eleanor didn’t like her cousin’s brilliant success at all, and yet you told me she was so anxious about it. Can’t make you girls out.

You say she’s been to college all her life and is awfully smart? Well, I suppose she is—she looks that way—but she didn’t come any of it on us. And yet she’s clever, that’s sure, for she knows all the points of difference between the Rugby and Association game, and I heard her talking golf with Claghart and telling Professor Radnor that dancing was a healthful amusement, and he was asking her, in the most idiotic way, if she’d teach him the two-step. Wasn’t that rich! And old Gray said to a lot of fellows in the smoking-room that, “By Jove, she was the handsomest girl he’d seen in a quarter of a century, and that if she was an example of a college-bred girl he wished they’d all go to college.”

Well, I must stop. I really believe, Grace, this is the longest letter I ever wrote, and I want you to put it to my credit—understand? and the next time I try to arrange a trip to Mount Vernon with certain people, you’ll please be more amenable to reason—See?

I think I’ve told you everything except that I’m going to stop here for a few days—they’re always asking me, you know, and I told Margaret last night that I’d accept this time. Eleanor looked as if she didn’t half like it. Why not, do you suppose? But I can’t tear myself away. I’m desperately in love with “La Belle Hélène,” besides I’m awfully interested in watching the running between Claghart and Montrose. It will be a close finish, I think, with Claghart in the lead, Montrose a good second, and a full field not far behind. Excuse sporting instincts and language.

As ever, your aff. brother,
Jerry.

How’s your throat? Better, I hope. Hers is lovely—“like a piece of marble column”—at least that’s what Reggie confided to me at 3 G. M. this morning.

J. F.

AS TOLD BY HER

THE waiters had served the coffee and were retiring in long rows down the sides of the big dining-hall. The rattle of knives and forks and the noise of general and animated talk were subsiding, and the pleased, expectant hush which always precedes the toasts, was falling upon the assembly. At the lower end of the room, farthest from the “distinguished-guest” table, the unimportant people began to turn their chairs around toward the speakers and to say “’Sh!” and “Who’s that?” to each other in subdued whispers, and the seniors grasped their sheepskins less nervously and began to realize their importance and the fact that they were no longer undergraduates but full-fledged alumnæ. And with the realization came a curious disagreeable sensation and a queer tightening in the throat, accompanied by a horrible inclination to shed tears over the closed chapter of their lives. Then they fiercely thought how their brothers act under similar circumstances, and wished they were men and could give the class yell and drink champagne to stifle their feelings. That being impossible they tasted a very mild decoction of coffee and turned their troubled eyes to the far end of the room, and wished ardently that the President would get on her feet and say something funny to make them forget that this was the end, the last act of politeness on the part of the faculty to them, that they were being gracefully evicted, as it were, and could never be taken back upon the same terms or under the same conditions.

It was the annual Commencement dinner to the retiring senior class, and the senior class was, as usual, feeling collapsed and blank after the excitement of Commencement week and the discovery that they were B.A.’s or B.S.’s, and that the world was before them and there would be no more faculties to set them going or haul them up, but that they would have to depend on their own faculties in the future. There was the annual foregathering of brilliant men and women whose presence was to be an incentive to the newly fledged alumnæ, and the display of whose wit and wisdom in after-dinner speeches was to be a last forcible impression of intellectual vigor and acquirements left on their minds.

Suddenly the President arose. She stood there, graceful, perfectly at ease, waiting for a moment of entire silence. Her sensitive, bloodless face looked more animated than usual, her brown eyes quietly humorous. It was a face eminently characteristic—indicative of the element of popularity and adaptability in her nature that made her, just then, so valuable to the college. When she spoke her voice carried a surprising distance, notwithstanding its veiled, soft quality, so that those farthest from her were able to catch and enjoy the witty, gnomic, sarcastic manner of her speech.

What she said was taken down by the shorthand reporter smuggled in for the occasion by the enterprising class-president and is enrolled in the class-book, so it need not be recorded here; but when she had finished, the editor of one of the foremost magazines in the country was smiling and nodding his head appreciatively, and a man whose sermons are listened to by thousands every Lord’s Day leaned over and made some quick side remark to her and ran his hands in a pleased, interested way through his long hair; and the young and already famous President of a certain college said, on rising, that he felt very genuine trepidation at attempting any remarks after that. He fully sustained his reputation, however, of a brilliant talker, and was followed by the honorary member of the juniors, whose post-prandial speeches have made him famous on both sides of the water.

The room became absolutely quiet, save for the voice of the speaker, the occasional burst of applause, and the appreciative murmur of the listeners. Outside, the afternoon began to grow mellow, long shadows thrown by the pointed turrets of the building lay across the green campus, the ivy at the big windows waved to and fro slightly in the cool breeze. Attention flagged; people began to tire of the clever, witty responses to the toasts and to look about them a little.

At one of the tables reserved for the alumnæ, near the upper end of the room, sat a girl dressed in deep mourning. Her face was very beautiful and intelligent, with the intelligence that is more the result of experience than of unusual mental ability. There were delicate, fine lines about the mouth and eyes. She could not have been more than twenty-four or five, but there was an air of firmness and decision about her which contradicted her blond—almost frivolous—beauty and lent dignity to the delicate figure.

After awhile she leaned back in her chair a trifle wearily and looked about her curiously as if for changes. The general aspect of the place remained the same, she decided, but there were a great many new faces—new faces in the faculty, too, where one least likes to find them. Here and there she saw an old acquaintance and smiled perfunctorily, but, on the whole, there was no one present she cared very much to see. She had just come to the conclusion that she was sorry she had made the long journey to be present at the dinner when she became conscious that someone was looking intently at her across the room. She leaned forward eagerly and smiled naturally and cordially for the first time. And then she sank back suddenly and blushed like a school-girl and smiled again, but in a different way, as if at herself, or at some thought that tickled her fancy. It certainly did strike her as rather amusing and presuming for her to be smiling and bowing so cordially to Professor Arbuthnot. She remembered very distinctly, in what awe she had stood of that learned lady, and that in her undergraduate days she had systematically avoided her, since she could not avoid her examinations and their occasionally disastrous consequences. She recalled very forcibly the masterly lectures, the logical, profound, often original talks, which she had heard in her lecture-room, though she had to acknowledge to herself reproachfully, that the matter of them had entirely escaped her memory. She had been one of a big majority who had always considered Professor Arbuthnot as a very high type—perhaps the highest type the college afforded—of a woman whose brains and attainments would make her remarkable in any assembly of savants. In her presence she had always realized very keenly her own superficiality, and she felt very much flattered that such a woman should have remembered her and not a little abashed as she thought of the entire renunciation of study she had made since leaving college. She wondered what Professor Arbuthnot might be thinking about her—she knew she was thinking about her, because the bright eyes opposite were still fixed upon her with their piercing, not unkindly gaze. It occurred to her at last, humorously, that perhaps the Professor was not considering her at all, but some question in—thermo-electric currents for instance.

But Miss Arbuthnot’s mind was not on thermo-electric currents; she was saying to herself: “She is much more beautiful than when she was here, and there is a new element of beauty in her face, too. I wonder where she has been since, and why she is in mourning. She was unintelligent, I remember. It’s a great pity—brains and that sort of beauty rarely ever go together. Her name was Ellis—yes—Grace Ellis. I think I must see her later.” And the Professor gave her another piercing smile and settled herself to listen to a distinguished political economist—a great friend of hers—speak.

The Political Economist got upon his feet slowly and with a certain diffidence. He was a man who had made his way, self-taught, from poverty and ignorance to a professorship in one of the finest technical schools of America.

There was a brusqueness in his manner, and the hard experiences of his life had made him old. He spoke in a quiet, authoritative way. He declared, with a rather heavy attempt at jocoseness, that his hearers had had their sweets first, so to speak, and that they must now go back and take a little solid, unpalpable nourishment; that he had never made a witty or amusing remark in his life, and he did not propose to begin and try then, and finally he hinted that the President had made a very bad selection when she invited him to respond to the toast—“The Modern Education of Woman.” As he warmed to his subject he became more gracious and easy in manner. He spoke at length of the evolution of women’s colleges, their methods, their advantages, their limitations; he touched upon the salient points of difference between a man’s college life and that of a girl; differences of character, of interests, of methods of work. And then he went on:

“I believe in it—I believe firmly in the modern education of woman. It is one of the things of most vital interest to me; but my enthusiasm does not blind me. There are phases of it which I do not indorse. I object to many of its results. The most obvious bad result is the exaggerated importance which the very phrase has assumed.” He smiled plaintively around upon the company. “Are we to have nothing but woman’s education—toujours l’éducation de la femme? There is such eagerness to get to college, such blind belief in what is to be learned there, such a demand for a college education for women, that we are overwhelmed by it. Every year these doors are closed upon hundreds of disappointed women, who turn elsewhere, or relinquish the much-prized college education. The day is not far distant when it will be a distinct reproach to a woman that she is not college-bred.” He looked down thoughtfully and intently and spoke more slowly.

“It is this phase of it which sometimes troubles me. Life is so rich in experience for woman—so much richer and fuller for woman than for

man—that I tremble at this violent reaction from nature to art. To-day woman seems to forget that she must learn to live, not live to learn. At the risk of being branded as ‘behind the times,’ of being considered narrow, bigoted, old-fashioned, I must say that until woman re-discovers that life is everything, that all she can learn here in a hundred times the four years of her college course is but the least part of what life and nature can teach her, until then I shall not be wholly satisfied with the modern education of woman.”

When he ceased there was an awkward and significant silence, and the editor looked over at him and smiled and shook his head reprovingly. And then the President got up quickly and with a few graceful, apropos remarks restored good-humor, and taking the arm of the distinguished divine, led the way from the dining-hall to the reception-rooms, and people jostled each other good-naturedly, and edged themselves between chairs and tables to speak to acquaintances, and there was much laughter and questioning and exclamations of surprise and delight, until finally the long procession got itself outside the dining-hall into the big corridors.

At the door Professor Arbuthnot caught sight of Miss Ellis again. She beckoned to the girl, who came quickly toward her.

“I am tired and am going to my rooms for awhile, will you come?” The girl blushed again with pleasure and some embarrassment.

“I should be delighted,” she said simply, and together they walked down the broad hallway.

“It’s very good of you,” she broke in nervously, looking down at the small, quiet figure beside hers—she was head and shoulders taller than the Professor.

“Not at all,” declared Miss Arbuthnot, kindly. “I want to see you—it has been a long while since you were a student here—four or five years I should say—and you recall other faces and times.”

“It has been four years—I can hardly believe it,” said the girl, softly. She wondered vaguely what on earth Miss Arbuthnot could wish to see her for—she had been anything but a favorite with the faculty as a student, but she felt very much flattered and very nervous at the attention bestowed upon her.

When she reached Professor Arbuthnot’s rooms, the embarrassment she had felt at being noticed by so distinguished a member of the faculty visibly increased.

The place was typical—the absence of all ornament and feminine bric-à-brac—the long rows of book-shelves filled with the most advanced works on natural sciences, the tables piled up with brochures and scientific magazines, enveloped her in an atmosphere of profound learning quite oppressive. She had never been in the room but once before, and that was on a most inauspicious occasion—just after the mid-year’s. She wondered uneasily, and yet with some amusement, if Professor Arbuthnot remembered the circumstance. But that lady was not thinking of the young girl. She was busy with her mail, which had just been brought in, opening and folding up letter after letter in a quick, methodical way.

“More work for me,” she said, smiling; “here is an invitation to deliver six lectures on electro-optics.” The girl looked at her admiringly.

“Absolutely I’ve forgotten the very meaning of the words; and as for lecturing!” she broke off with a little laugh. “Are you going to give them?”

“Yes: it makes a great deal of work for me, but I never refuse such invitations. Besides I shall be able to take these lectures almost bodily from a little book I am getting out.” Professor Arbuthnot went over to the desk and lifted up a pile of manuscript, and smiled indulgently at the girl’s exclamation of awe.

“It isn’t much,” she went on. “Only some experiments I have been making in the optical effects of powerful magnets. They turned out very prettily. I have a good deal of hard work to do on the book yet. I shall stay here a week or two longer, quite alone, and finish it all up.”

The girl touched the papers reverently.

“Here is a note I have just received from Professor ——” (Miss Arbuthnot named one of the most distinguished authorities of the day on magnetism and electricity). “I sent him some of the first proof-sheets, and he says he’s delighted with them. We are great friends.”

The girl’s awe and admiration increased with every movement. She looked at the small, slight woman whose intelligent, ugly face had an almost child-like simplicity of expression, contrasting strangely enough with the wrinkled, bloodless skin and piercing eyes. Her hair, which was parted and brushed severely back, was thickly sprinkled with gray.

She gasped a little. “You actually know him—know Professor ——?”

Miss Arbuthnot laughed. “Oh, yes,” she said; “we often work together. We get along famously; we are ‘sympathetic’ in our work, as the French say.”

The girl swept her a mock courtesy.

“I feel too flattered for anything that you deign to speak to me,” she said, laughing and bowing low.

Professor Arbuthnot looked pleased; she was far above conceit, but she was not entirely impervious to such fresh, genuine admiration. She was feeling particularly happy, too, over the results of her experiments—particularly interested in her work.

“If you are so impressed by that,” she laughed, “I shall have to tell you something even more wonderful still. I have just received an honorary degree from —— College. It was quite unexpected, and I must say I am extremely pleased. It is very agreeable to know that one’s work is appreciated when one has given one’s life to it.”

It seemed to the girl, with these evidences of success appealing to her, that a life could not be more nobly spent than in such work. She went slowly around the room after that, looking at a great many interesting things. At books with priceless autographs on their title-pages, and photographs of famous scientists, and diagrams of electrical apparatus, and editions in pamphlet form of articles by Professor Arbuthnot, published originally in scientific journals.

The girl suddenly felt sick and ashamed of herself. It struck her very forcibly just how little she knew, and how she had neglected her opportunities.

“What an awful ignoramus I am!” she burst out at length. “I don’t know what these mean; I have only the vaguest idea what these men have done. How different you are! Your life has had a high aim and you have attained it. While I——!” she stopped with a scornful gesture. “If it were not for Julian I believe I would come back here and start over!”

Miss Arbuthnot looked at her critically. She admired the girl’s beauty tremendously—it was her one weakness—this love of beauty. She never looked at herself in a mirror oftener than necessary.

“Ah! Julian; who is Julian?”

The girl blushed again—she had a pretty way of flushing quickly.

“Julian?—why he’s my husband. I forgot to tell you that I married my cousin, Julian Ellis, as soon as I left college.”

“Really!” Miss Arbuthnot came over and sat down on the divan beside the girl. “You look so young,” she said, rather wistfully. “And you have been married four years?”

The girl nodded. “It seems much longer,” she said. “I have had—a great deal of trouble.”

“Tell me about it,” said the older woman kindly. But the girl was much embarrassed at the idea of talking of her own little affairs to Professor Arbuthnot.

“I am afraid it would only bore you,” she said, hurriedly. “Your interests—you are interested in so many——”

But Miss Arbuthnot was firm. “Let me hear,” she insisted.

“I’m sure I hardly know what there is to tell,” the girl began nervously. “My father was much opposed to my marrying Julian. He did not wish me to leave college; and he did not believe in cousins marrying. He said that if we did he would disinherit me—you know he is rich. But Julian and I were in love with each other, and so of course we got married.” She stopped suddenly and drawing off her glove looked at her wedding-ring. Professor Arbuthnot watched her curiously. The girl’s simple statement—“and of course we got married” struck her forcibly. She wondered what it would feel like to be swayed by an emotion so powerful that a father’s commands and the loss of a fortune would have absolutely no influence upon it. She could not remember ever having felt anything like that.

“Julian was awfully poor and I of course had nothing more, and so we went to Texas—Julian had an opening there,” she went on. “It was awfully lonely—we lived ten miles from the nearest town—and you know what a Texas town is.” Miss Arbuthnot shook her head. She had never been west of Ohio.

The girl gave a little in-drawn gasp. “Well, it’s worse than anything you can conceive of. I think one has to live in one of them and then move away and have ten miles of dead level prairie land between you and it to know just what loneliness is. But we were so happy, so happy at first—until Julian was taken ill.” She leaned back against the couch and clasped her hands around her knees.

“It was awful—I can’t tell you,” she went on in a broken voice. “But you know what unspeakable agony it is to see what you love best on earth ill and suffering, and you nearly powerless to do a thing. And how I loved him! I never knew until then what he was—how much of my life he had become. You must know what agony I went through?” she looked interrogatively, beseechingly at the woman beside her.

Miss Arbuthnot looked away. “I am not sure—I—I was never in love,” she said uncertainly. A curious wave of jealousy swept over her that she who had been such a student, whose whole life had been a study, should have somehow missed experiences that this girl had lived through already. The girl shook her head softly, pityingly, as if she could hardly believe her.

“I shall never forget it, and that night,” she went on, closing her eyes faintly. “I thought he was dying. I had to have a doctor, but I was afraid to leave him. I remember how everything flashed through my mind. It was a decision for life or death. If I left him I knew I might never see him alive again, and yet if I did not——” She opened her eyes wide and clasped and unclasped her hands. “It was the most horrible moment of my life.”

“My poor child!” Miss Arbuthnot put her hand timidly on the girl’s arm. She suddenly felt absurdly inexperienced in her presence.

“I got Ivan’s saddle on him—I don’t know just how—and we started. It was about two o’clock I remember. The prairie looked just like the sea, at night—only more lonesome and quite silent. I was horribly frightened. Even Ivan was frightened. He trembled all over—it’s a terrible thing to see a horse tremble with fright.”

“Do you mean to say,” demanded Professor Arbuthnot, “that you rode twenty miles in the dead of night, alone upon a Texas prairie?”

“Yes,” answered the girl mechanically. “It was for Julian,” she added as if in entire explanation.

Miss Arbuthnot looked at her; she could not realize such wealth of courage and devotion. She wondered with a sudden, hot shame whether she would have dared it had she been in this girl’s place.

“I don’t think I ever prayed before—really prayed you know,” she ran on meditatively as if she had forgotten the Professor’s presence. “It was dawn when we got back.” She stopped entirely and looked out through the window onto the cool green campus. Miss Arbuthnot scarcely dared move. There was something so intimate, almost sacred in the girl’s revelations.

“Did he live?” she inquired softly at length.

The girl turned her face toward her. An almost illuminated look had come into it.

“Yes—the doctor saved his life, but he said if I had been two hours later——!”