Part 10 (1/2)
Martha was waiting for the elevator. She turned around and gazed at us without saying a word. She is considerably like Robbie Belle in her exasperating power of silence, but neither of them does it on purpose.
Unfortunately just then a senior behind her turned around too and said, ”n.o.body catches anybody here. This is a college, not a boarding school.”
Now such a remark as that was distinctly unkind, not so much because either Lila or I had ever been to a boarding school, for we hadn't, as because we wished we had. We had devoured all the stories about them and envied the girls in them. We had hoped that we would find some of the same kind of fun at college itself.
Lila blushed, and I could not think of any repartee that would be appropriate, especially as Martha was staring so hard at the gla.s.s of sugar. I had noticed all the fall that she was an odd child about candy.
She never would touch a mouthful of any that we made--and we made it pretty often--maybe four times a week. She always just shook her head and said she'd rather not.
It was a relief to hear the elevator come rattling up from the first floor. The dining-room is on the second, you see, though I don't know that this fact has any bearing on the story; still it may supply local color or realism or something like that. Well, we entered the elevator, and there stood a junior in the corner. This junior chanced to be an editor of the college magazine which had offered a ten dollar prize for the best short story handed in before October twentieth. She glanced at us and then stared hard at Martha till we had pa.s.sed the third floor, and at the fourth she walked out behind us and spoke to Martha. She said, ”Miss Reed, I think I am not premature in congratulating you upon the story which you submitted in the contest. You will receive official notice of your victory before very long.” And then she smiled the nicest sweetest smile at sight of Martha's face. It was like a burst of suns.h.i.+ne--anybody would have smiled. I hugged her--Martha, not the junior, because I am not well acquainted with her, you understand--but I wanted to hug everybody. Lila squeezed Martha so hard that she squeaked out loud.
”Oh,” sighed the little freshman almost to herself, ”now I can send mother a birthday present.”
Wasn't that dear of her to think of giving it away first thing! Of course some girls would have thought of having a spread to celebrate and invite in all the crowd; but Martha was only a freshman and probably had no college spirit as yet. Her remark seemed to remind Lila of something, for she quite jumped and exclaimed, ”Why, you baby, I had forgotten all about that two dollars and seventy-five cents I borrowed of you last month. And here it is only the sixth of November, but my allowance is nearly gone.
Why didn't you poke up my memory?”
”And I owe her ninety cents,” said I.
The little freshman walked on with her hands clasped high up over her necktie. ”Will they give me the prize soon?” she asked softly, ”because the birthday is Thursday, and to-day is Monday, and it takes two days to get there.”
Lila looked at me and I looked at Lila. ”We can sc.r.a.pe it together somehow,” she said. Then she touched Martha on the shoulder. ”Do you want to buy it to-morrow?” she inquired, ”because if you do, you shall. We'll manage it somehow. We'll pay you what we owe, and then you can buy a present even if the prize doesn't arrive in time.”
”Oh, thank you!” It was strange to see how voluble happiness was making the child. ”Will you really? I've wanted and wanted, but I couldn't ask.
I've got an engagement down town to try on my gymnasium suit to-morrow afternoon and I shall be so glad. I can mail it then.”
”All right,” said I, ”we'll get it for you.”
Then we forgot all about it till noon the next day. That was election day and full of excitement, even if we hadn't been late to breakfast, because the fudges kept us awake the night before. Martha had gone into her room early to study. Though she had closed the door I am afraid the girls made a lot of noise; and she woke up with a headache. Of course Berta and I and the others had a right to cut late if we wanted to do so, but we didn't mean to keep anybody from working.
Martha returned from breakfast just as I was catching together a tiny hole in my stocking above the shoe. It wasn't really my stocking, for I had lost mine by sending them unmarked to the laundry, and so I had borrowed these from Martha. They were her finest best ones, I believe, and very nice, though her clothes generally seemed shabby. This morning she told us to hurry down please, because the maid was feeling miserable.
We did hurry and tried not to complain of the cold cocoa or the tough steak, though it is certainly the maid's duty to get fresh hot things no matter how late the girls are. She couldn't find our favorite crescent rolls in the pantry or down-stairs in the bakery or anywhere. Before we were through eating, the other maids had cleared away their breakfast dishes and had their tables all set for luncheon. Our maid was naturally slow, I suspect.
After breakfast we had barely time to smooth the counterpanes over sheets and blankets that lay in wrinkles. They looked pretty well on top, but honestly I was relieved to have Martha and her big eyes out of the way.
Though we s.n.a.t.c.hed our books and ran through the corridors we were two minutes tardy in reaching the Latin room. The instructor was so irritable that she laid down her book and the whole cla.s.s waited while Lila and I tiptoed to our seats in the middle of the last row.
With all the campaign excitement of course we had let our work get crowded out, and the other girls appeared to be in the same fix. When the most dazzling star in the cla.s.s flunked on a grammatical reference, the instructor bit her lip and sent the question flying up one row and down another as fast as the students could shake their heads. As it came leaping nearer and nearer to us, Lila remembered a college story about a girl sliding from her place and kneeling behind the seat in front till the question had pa.s.sed on over the vacant spot. Lila was so agitated that she forgot how conspicuous we had been in entering late. She slipped out of her seat and hid like the girl in the story. Then fell an awful stillness. The question stopped right there, hovering over the empty place. Everybody waited. The instructor set her mouth in grimmer lines, and waited, her eyes glued to the spot from where Lila had vanished.
Those in front turned around to look. Lila knelt there waiting and waiting for the question to be pa.s.sed on to me. I shook my head as vigorously as I dared, but n.o.body paid any attention. Lila waited and waited; the instructor waited; everybody waited and waited, till Lila's knees ached so that she lifted her face and peeked. She peeked straight into those grim waiting eyes on the platform.
Then the instructor said, ”Miss Allan?” with the usual dreadful interrogative inflection, and Lila shook her head. She slid back into her seat with her cheeks as red as fire.
The minute we escaped into the hall at the end of the recitation, the girls gathered around us and giggled and teased Lila till she almost broke down and cried before them all. There is a lot of difference between playing jokes on another person and appearing ridiculous yourself. The first few weeks of the year we had teased Martha by telling her it was etiquette for freshmen to rise when addressed by soph.o.m.ores and stuff like that. The little thing was so unsophisticated that we made up yards and yards of stories about the dangers of going walking alone or being out after dusk. One student really did have her purse s.n.a.t.c.hed last year, and a senior saw a masked robber in the pines, and once a maid caught a glimpse of a face outside her window, and actually one evening six of us beheld with our own eyes a man jump through the hedge.
On this particular morning I had no time to waste, for my tutor in mathematics had warned me that she intended to charge me for the hour for which I had engaged her, no matter whether I arrived on the scene or not.
That struck me as queer and rather mean, because on some days I did not feel like going, and I failed to see why I should pay her for tutoring that I had not received. She said that her time was valuable and an hour squandered in waiting for a delinquent pupil was so much loss. I guess it was a loss to me too.
While I was flying around, trying to find my notes and pen, I heard a gulp and a sob from Martha's bedroom, and popped in to find her with her head buried in the pillow. The little idiot was crying because she had flunked in English.
”Oh, but English is so easy to bluff in!” I exclaimed, ”almost any string of words will do if the teacher asks for a discussion of a tendency or of nature or vocabulary or poetic form or something. Didn't you make a try at some sort of an answer?”