Part 16 (2/2)
”COME on, do, Nancy,” urged Judith; ”it's on Friday, there is nothing else doing and it's sure to be interesting, for there are to be pictures of the work in Italy and in Russia. Miss Ashwell's going to take us. I'm going to be her partner,” she added importantly.
”Well, that settles it,” said Nancy; ”you and your Miss Ashwell! I won't go if I can't go with you. It's a long walk from the University to the cars and I'm tired of Red Cross, anyway.”
Judith and Jane were curled up on Nancy's couch eating chocolates; Nancy had just had a birthday and Jack had sent her a gratifyingly large box of candy with the injunction to go ”fifty-fifty” with Judith and thus save herself from a bilious attack.
”I can't see why you are so keen on another Red Cross meeting, Judy. I should think you'd be tired of the subject after writing that long essay for Miss Kingston--but I forgot about your Uncle Brian.--Get off my foot, Jane, do.”
Jane selected another chocolate, and said with a chuckle:
”You should have been in our French division this morning! _Dear_ Miss Watson, how she hates me.”
”I don't wonder,” said Catherine, who was on the window-seat mending a lace ruffle. ”Don't tell me that you've been tormenting her again.”
”Certainly; we always do at the beginning of term, though we get tired of it after a while. We had verbs this morning with lots of _r's_ in them--accourir and servir and reconnaitre--so I winked to Althea and Maggie and we had a dandy time. It saves lots of work,” she added reflectively. ”Every time Miss Watson rolled an _r_, one of us put up a hand and asked to have the word repeated. We just couldn't understand her. We made it last for most of the period, and the poor dear didn't get to the exercise at all.”
”I'd have sent you packing, the whole lot of you, to Miss Meredith. You deserve it, and then I guess you'd be sorry, you little worms!”
”Oh, would you?” retorted Jane shrewdly; ”not if you had reported us all two days ago for setting a metronome going in cla.s.s. That _was_ fun!
Miss Meredith is getting tired of Miss Watson's returned lessons and bad marks, though she gave us a jolly good scolding, I must say. No, I think we are pretty safe for this week.” And she chuckled reminiscently.
”Choose some one your own size, Jane,” suggested Catherine, hunting for a piece of chocolate ginger; ”'t isn't sporting to pick on Miss Watson like that.”
”Well, why not?” demanded Jane. ”She isn't on her job--she's just plain stupid--I don't believe she ever thinks about anything.”
”Well, you're wrong there--she's just crazy about reading--she reads everything--her room is full of books, and Miss Ashwell says she knows more about Russian literature than most people in this country. None of you children been bothering Miss Ashwell, have you?”
There was an indignant denial, and Judith, remembering that she had seen her friend and comforter looking very much as if she herself stood in need of comforting, asked quickly:
”Why do you ask, Cathy?”
”Oh, well, she seems bothered,” was the rather vague answer.
Judith ran down to Miss Ashwell's room at visiting time that night, and tapping at the door put in her head and enquired, ”May I come in?”
”Not just now, Judith,” said Miss Ashwell, ”I'm busy.”
Judith with a mumbled apology disappeared at once, but not before she had seen that Miss Ashwell's busy-ness had to do apparently with the snapshot of a handsome soldier propped against the reading-lamp--a despatch case lay open on the floor beside her and there were letters strewn over the table and in Miss Ashwell's lap.
”Now, wasn't that too bad of me to rush in like that,” thought Judith, as she hurried away. ”I wonder if that's the picture she showed me the other day--she was probably going to write to him--wouldn't it be exciting?”
Miss Ashwell looked complacently next day at her line of forty girls as they were ushered into reserved seats near the front of Convocation Hall. They might some of them look like young hoydens in middy blouses and gymnasium bloomers--which costume most of them affected during school hours--but now, in their trim serge suits and _chic_ little hats, they were a credit to their chaperon, and as it was considered bad form to misbehave ”in line” at church or concert or lecture, Miss Ashwell settled down and gave herself up to the luxury of her own thoughts.
Judith, sitting beside her and looking eagerly at the portraits of founders and benefactors, decided that they could not be very happy thoughts, for she heard one soft little sigh and then another. Miss Ashwell was unhappy again! Something pathetic about the droop of her lips made Judith feel sudden anger against the unknown cause of Miss Ashwell's melancholy. It might, of course, have been a large millinery bill, or indigestion, or a blouse that wouldn't fit, but Judith's romantic soul would have none of these. It must be that man in the Italian snapshots. How pretty Miss Ashwell had looked that day when she had showed Judith the Italian pictures! How her eyes had deepened until they were almost violet, and how her cheeks had glowed! Perhaps he was an unfaithful lover, perhaps he had married an Italian girl, or even a German in a sudden impulse of pity, and now could not come home to Canada to face his old love. No, not married, just betrothed, because of course he must come home, and Judith was already staging Miss Ashwell's wedding when the President and faculty members, together with distinguished guests and officials of the Red Cross Society, took their places on the dais.
Judith leaned forward eagerly. How delightfully the red and blue splashes of colour of the professors' academic hoods showed up against the old-oak panelling. That must be an Oxford hood, and there was an Edinburgh one. Daddy had showed her one like that--but the President was speaking. He regretted that Dr. Johnson, who was to have lectured this afternoon, was unavoidably absent through illness, but a distinguished graduate of their own, who had been with the Intelligence Staff in Italy and had won the Military Cross because of a particularly brilliant piece of work there, who had been a prisoner in Russia for nearly a year, and who had recently been engaged in relief work in Serbia, had been prevailed upon to take Dr. Johnson's place. He had much pleasure in introducing Major David Phillips.
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