Part 8 (2/2)

And the whole of the cla.s.s applauded her speech.

”I shall love to see you in your cap and gown,” Jessie went on, firing at the picture in her own imagination. ”Very few of the men will be taller than you, Mary. How they will shout!”

Jessie had no thought at all of her own lack of height and grace, as she had no idea of how pleasant her little brown face was despite its plainness. She was going to earn her living by teaching, and, what was more, going to make living easier and pleasanter for her mother and her young sister. To get her mother out of stuffy town lodgings to a seaside cottage, which was an unattainable heaven to the mother's thoughts, to educate Edie and give her a chance in life--these were the things that filled Jessie's mind to the exclusion of fear whenever she thought of her ordeal at the conferring of the University degrees. To be sure, she trembled a little when she thought of the long, brilliantly lighted Hall, and all the fine ladies, and the scarlet robes of the Senators, and the young barbarians in the gallery, and all the thousands of eyes fixed on the one little dumpling of a woman going up to receive her degree. If she might only win the fellows.h.i.+p! She would not care what ordeal she pa.s.sed through for that. So she put away the fear from her mind. If she could only win the fellows.h.i.+p! But she was too humble about her own attainments to have more than a little, little hope of that.

How generous they all were, Mary thought, with an impulse of grat.i.tude towards those dear cla.s.s-fellows that brought the tears to her eyes.

”When we are photographed in our caps and gowns,” said another, ”you must stand up in the middle of us, Mary, so that they will see how tall you are.”

Mary reported their generosity to Lady Anne, with whom, by this time, she was on the loving terms that cast out fear.

”Very creditable to them,” the old lady said, twinkling. ”Don't let it make you vain, Mary. You're well enough, but you aren't half as pretty as a rose, or half as tall as a tree, and there are thousands of trees and roses in the world.”

”I don't think myself pretty,” Mary said, in a hurt voice. ”There are several of the girls far prettier. As for being tall, it is no pleasure.

I would much rather be little.”

”Your skirts will always cost you more than other girls'.”

”It is only because they are so kind and generous that they think well of me,” Mary went on. ”And, oh! I do hope that Jessie will win the fellows.h.i.+p. Everyone does, even----”

”Even her opponents,” the old lady said, drily. It was always Lady Anne's way to seem cynical over things, even with those she loved best.

”She has worked so hard for it,” said Mary, ”and Alice Egerton, who is in the running, too, has shaken hands with Jessie, and told her that if she wins it will only prove she is the better man.”

”Dear me, we are cultivating the manly virtues, too,” said Lady Anne.

”Let me see: there are twenty young ladies in your cla.s.s, and not a spiteful one among them. I have never heard of so low a percentage.”

”If women were given something to think of besides petty interests,”

Mary began hotly. ”If they were educated, if they were given ideals----”

”You are only on your trial yet, child,” Lady Anne suggested. ”We produced very good women before Women's Colleges were heard of. I'm glad they've not spoilt you, anyhow. No stooped shoulders, no narrow chest, no dimmed eyes. I couldn't have forgiven them if they had made you pay a price for your learning.”

When Mary received her B.A. degree she was applauded more rapturously from the gallery than even the new Fellow, Miss Jessica Baynes, B.A., who knew little enough about her own reception, since, as she left the das, she had glanced up and made out her mother's little nutcracker face, so like her own, in one of the circles of faces overhead.

There was a little group in the balcony watching Mary with fond pride.

Lady Anne Hamilton's face shone again as the tall, slender young figure went up amid the furious applause of the undergraduates, through which the general clapping of hands could hardly be heard. Behind Lady Anne were Mary's father and stepmother. Lady Anne had taken care that they should not be forgotten in the distribution of tickets. Walter Gray looked on quietly. He was very proud of his girl; but he had, perhaps, too great a wisdom to set much store by the plaudits of the many. Mrs.

Gray, in a bonnet Mary had made for her and a mantle which had been Mary's gift, was in a timid rapture. She was older by some years than she had been when Mary went to Lady Anne first, but she was far more comely. Her family seemed to have reached its limits, for one thing, and she was no more the helpless drudge she had been. Several of the children were at school, and that wonderfully elastic salary of Mary's had done miraculous things in the way of bringing comfort and even refinement to Walter Gray's home.

”Well,” said Lady Anne, turning round, and touching Walter Gray's arm, ”I have not made too bad a fairy G.o.dmother, have I, now?”

”She would never have grown so tall,” Walter Gray said, with absent eyes. He had yielded up Mary for her good, but he had never ceased to miss her.

One person who sat among the most distinguished group in the Hall looked at Mary with a lively interest.

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