Part 17 (1/2)

For her junior year Bea was fortunate enough to secure a mail-route, the proceeds of which helped to make her independent of a home allowance for spending money. To tell the truth, however, she enjoyed the work even more than the salary. While distributing the letters she felt a personal share in every delighted, ”Oh, thank you!” in each ever-unsatisfied, ”Is that all?” or the disappointed, ”Nothing for me to-day?”

From her own experience and observation during the years already past, she was particularly interested in the different pairs of roommates who came within the scope of her daily trips. In a certain double lived two freshmen, one of whom always greeted her with, ”Oh, thank you!” whether the mail was addressed to her or to her roommate. But when the roommate answered the knock, she invariably exclaimed, no matter how much was handed to her, ”Is that all?”

More than once in her reports to Lila, Bea declared that it was about time for a wave of reform in the vicinity of Ethelwynne Bruce. Perhaps she might even have contemplated the possibility of engineering something of the kind herself, if she had not been too busy to spare the necessary thought-energy. In the course of events, fate with its machinery of circ.u.mstances added an extra lesson to Ethelwynne's college course.

It happened one evening during the skating season.

Ethelwynne with her skates jingling over her arm came s.h.i.+vering into the room. ”Oo-oo-ooh!” Her teeth chattered. ”Wynnie's freezing. Do shut that window and turn on the heat, Agnes. It is hard lines to live in a double with a regular Polar bear direct from the land of Sparta. You ought to keep it up as high as forty degrees anyhow.”

”Sh-h!” The smooth dark head at the desk bent lower over the water-color before her. ”Don't interrupt this minute. There's a dear. I've got to catch this last streak of daylight----”

”But it isn't daylight,” fretted Ethelwynne, ”the moon's up already. And I'm so chilly! I wish you would help me make some hot chocolate.”

”Look at the thermometer. Ah, one more stroke of that exquisite saffron on the stem! Hush, now. Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer,” she muttered abstractedly while concentrating all her mental attention in the tips of her skilful fingers.

Ethelwynne stared at her a moment before giving a little chuckle that ended in a s.h.i.+ver. ”Look at the thermometer, look at the thermometer,”

she echoed sarcastically, ”I reckon that'll warm me up, won't it? Like somebody or other who set a lighted candle inside the fireless stove and then warmed himself at the glowing isingla.s.s. Suppose your old thermometer does say seventy or eighty or ninety or a hundred? Maybe it is telling a story. Why should I trust an uneducated instrument that has never studied ethics? Now listen here!” She lifted her skates and poised them to throw from high above her head. ”Hist! if you don't drop those hideous toadstools of yours and begin to sympathize with me this instant, I shall hur-r-rl this clanking steel----”

Agnes still painting busily raised one elbow in an att.i.tude of half-unconscious defense.

”----upon the floor-r-r!”

At the cras.h.i.+ng rattlety-bang Agnes sprang to her feet with a nervous shriek. Ethelwynne dived for her skates and felt them carefully. ”I tried to pick out the softest spot on the rug,” she complained whimsically, ”but there wasn't any other way to wake her up. And I simply had to have some sympathy. Oo-oo-ooh, Wynnie's freezing!”

Agnes had returned to her brushes and was wiping them dry in heartless silence.

”Wynnie's freezing, I say.”

”Say it again,” counseled the other's calm voice. ”I am so provoked at myself for jumping at every little noise! It is shameful to have so little control over my own nerves even if I am tired. Ah! what was that?”

”Jump again,” advised Ethelwynne in a tone that was meant to be serene but proved rather jerky. ”It was nothing but my teeth chattering and clicking together.”

”Generally it's your tongue,” retorted Agnes with interest but broke off in this promising repartee to exclaim with genuine anxiety, ”Why, Wynnie, child, you have a regular chill. Lie down quick and let me cover you up.

Have you been out skating ever since I left you on the lake?”

”Yes, I have,” she replied with an air of defiance, ”you needn't preach.

I couldn't bear to come in. Everybody out. We had square dances, s.h.i.+nney-on-the-ice, wood tag. Perfectly glorious! Such a splendid elegant sunset behind the bare trees! I simply had to stay. Beatrice Leigh and her crowd were there. A big moon came sailing up. We skated to music--somebody whistled it. I couldn't bear to stop. I wanted to stay, I tell you. I wanted to stay.”

”Hm-m,” said Agnes, ”I wanted to stay too. But what with the Latin test to-morrow and this plate for the book on fungi to be sent off in the morning, I managed to tear myself away.”

”You're different. Oo-oo-ooh!” Ethelwynne s.h.i.+vered violently again. ”You like to deny yourself. You enjoy discipline. It gives you pleasure to do what you hate. You love duty just because it is disagreeable.”

”My--land!” Agnes clutched her own head. ”The infant must have slipped up a dozen times too often. Did the horrid bad ice smite her at the base of the brain? Poor little darling! Is her intellect all mixedy-muddle-y? We will fix it right for her. We'll give her a pill.”

”I think I have caught cold,” moaned her roommate from the depths of the blankets.

Agnes looked judicial. ”Our doctor at home has a theory that people take cold easily when they have been eating too much sweet stuff. He says that colds are most frequent after Thanksgiving. Now I wonder--I believe--why, you surely did go to a meeting of the fudge-club in Martha's room last night. Ethelwynne, did you eat it? Did you eat it even after all the doctor said to you about your sick headaches?”

”Of course I ate it. How do you expect me to sit hungry in a roomful of girls all digging into that plateful of brown delicious soft hot fudge with their little silver spoons, and I not even tasting it? I hated to make myself conspicuous before the juniors there. They would think I am a hypochondriac, and Berta Abbott might have said something to make the others look at me and laugh. I don't believe the stuff hurts me a particle. Doctors always want you to give up the things you like best.”

”Oh, Ethelwynne!” groaned Agnes, ”you never deny yourself anything. It is the only trait I don't like in you. Now you have caught a dreadful cold just because you could not refuse the candy. You must break it up with quinine.” She fetched a small box from the bureau in her bedroom. ”Here, open your mouth.”