XVIIA PRIVATE DETECTIVE

Yet with it all nobody dared speak to Clarissa. They quoted what this professor or that professor’s wife had said; how one had declared that nothing would induce him to lecture at Radcliffe, how another had termed this the natural result of trying to benefit women,—they would merely hold up their benefactors to ridicule,—and still no one dared reprove Clarissa. The Western girl wrapped herself in a forbidding manner, and not even Polly dared speak of the article or its effects.

But one day, turning the matter over in her mind, she came to a decision. “A party will be the very thing,” she said to herself, “and Clarissa shall give it. Ruth and Julia and Lois Forsaith, oh, yes, and Pamela, and two or three others,—as many as she can afford chairs for,—it will be the very thing.”

Clarissa’s room was in a small, neat house in a neat side street. Her landlady had other boarders, but she took a real interest in them all.

Clarissa’s room looked on a little yard filled with pear trees, and the children of the neighborhood played constantly under her windows. This did not disturb her, for her nerves were not near the surface. Sometimes she called the children to her room and gave them a treat of fruit or sweet things. Mrs. Freeman’s other boarders thought Clarissa rather frivolous. One of them was a timid Freshman who studied unremittingly. Two of the others were graduate students, delving into zoölogy, and other “mussy sciences” (Clarissa’s phraseology), and the fifth was an inoffensive Sophomore. The two graduates roomed together. Clarissa had the best room in the house, but the Freshman had a small room under the eaves. The Freshman sometimes complained that she had made a mistake, and that she should have had a room in a lodging-house where she could have boarded herself with the aid of a chafing-dish and gas stove.

“And starve to death, with nobody nigh to hinder,” said Clarissa. “I’m glad that kind of thing is not encouraged at Radcliffe. But I wish that you had the room on my floor, instead of those zoölogists. Often about tenP.M.when I’ve finished studying I’d slip in and talk with you. Sometimes I knock on the zoölogical door, but if they let me in I feel like a criminal, for I can see that they are making a great effort to be polite, while they wish me a thousand miles away. They like to study well into the small hours, but as they pay for their own oil nobody can well object. I’m not half as entertaining to them as those squirmy things they keep in bottles. The only real gaiety in which they ever indulge is an ethical discussion with Pamela; just imagine the combination, ethics and zoölogy!”

The other girl laughed. “You might start a discussion at your party.”

“No, thank you, it’s to be a poster party, nothing more nor less improving than posters will be considered worthy of mention.”

Clarissa had yielded to Polly’s plans for the party, understanding the spirit in which it had been arranged. It had been talked of indefinitely before the affair of the newspaper; and although Polly did not now explain why she was so anxious to have her friend turn entertainer at this particular time, Clarissa understood, and Polly knew that she understood.

Nearly all who had been invited responded to Clarissa’s invitation, and one windy evening they gathered very contentedly around the open fire in her room. Clarissa’s room was as different as possible from Julia’s. To its rather homely furnishings she had added various things that had caught her fancy without regard to any scheme of art. There was a vivid Navajo blanket over her couch, and two Indian baskets from the Southwest on a bracket in a corner. Some Japanese fans were displayed over the mantle-piece, and just above them hung in a black frame a fine photograph of the Arch of Titus. But the other three walls, whether beautiful or ugly in the matter of their everyday decorations, for this evening were hidden by posters—posters large, small, ugly, beautiful, covered every spot.

“I know,” said Clarissa, in explanation, after welcoming her guests, “I know that posters have gone out of fashion. That is partly why I’ve taken them up. I had thought of offering prizes to the girl who could guess the artist of the largest number, but instead of that I’m going to explain them myself. Lo! here is a pointer that I brought over from Fay House this very afternoon.” So armed with the long wooden stick, Clarissa moved about the room, explaining much after the fashion of an auctioneer who has something to dispose of.

“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining”“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining”

“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining”

“This you will see is undoubtedly French. You could tell it by the anatomy of the cats, if in no other way. Such creatures were never seen on this side of the Atlantic. Jim got it for me. The real name of the work of art is ‘Lait Pur Sterilisé;’” and as she paused for a moment, they all gazed with fitting admiration on the child in a red dress drinking from a bowl under the envious eyes of three cats.

“Well, it’s better,” said Polly, “than some of those greenery yallery things. No wonder Aubrey Beardsley died young.”

“Oh, Polly, you artless creature, didn’t you dote on the Yellow Book?”

“Not I,” replied Polly. “I measured Mrs. Patrick Campbell as once portrayed there, and in proportion to the length of her head as there shown she must be about ten feet tall.”

“Why, Polly, I didn’t realize that you knew so much about Art.”

“Oh, I know more things than I am sometimes credited with,” and there was an undertone of deeper meaning in Polly’s voice.

“Here’s a Grasset,” continued Clarissa, resuming her explanations. “Isn’t it a beauty?”

“No, no, Clarissa,” said Julia, “I like this better;” and rising, she put her hand on a poster with a Puritan maiden carrying mistletoe.

“You show your taste,” said Clarissa, “that’s a Rhead.” Though hung near Dudley Hardy’s “Gaiety Girl” in poster land, the two did not seem inharmonious neighbors. Not far from them was Bemliardt’s Jeanne d’Arc, and for fifteen minutes or more Clarissa kept her friends amused with the poster show. Before her art lecture was quite at an end, Julia as assistant hostess had lit the lamp under the chafing-dish, and then when the others found that fudge-making was the next thing on the programme, each one wished to offer her own receipt, and to the great surprise of the company it was found that each receipt varied a little from the others.

“First you grate a pound of chocolate into the chafing-dish,” began Polly.

“Oh, not a pound—half a pound at first,” interrupted Julia.

“It’s a great deal better to begin by melting your butter, and then put in a pint of milk,” added Ruth.

“I never use any milk,” interposed Clarissa.

“Then you let it simmer half an hour,” resumed Polly.

“Oh, there isn’t any fixed length of time,” cried Ruth again; “just let it cook until it’s done.”

“How do you know when it’s done?”

Then followed a Babel of voices, as each one told what she thought the proper test; and a listener, I fear, who knew nothing of fudge-making, would have had hard work to select a working receipt from the directions given by these merry girls.

By the time the fudge was ready the ball had been set rolling, and it was evident that Clarissa’s party was a success. While Ruth and Lois were superintending a second chafing-dish, in which a rarebit was preparing, Polly picked up a guitar and began to accompany herself, as she sang the opening lines of one of the Radcliffe classics, “The Mermaid.”

“That’s just the thing to cheer us up.”

“As if you needed cheering! But here it is!” And Polly struck the chords with a firm hand, as she sang about the little mermaid who

“Could not even speak Acroparthianic Greek,And she’d no instruction in Theology.One day she found, as she swam around,A Radcliffe catalogue,Which shone afar like an evening starFrom out the mist and fog.She paused to rest on a billow’s crest,In a wreath of sparkling foam,And when she had read what the catalogue said,She decided to leave her home.She saw at once that she was a dunceAnd ought to go to college.So dressed in her best with a hat from Céleste,She set out for the shrine of knowledge.The cars were so filled she was almost killed,But she found she could easily swimUp Garden Street, that road so neatThat has Radcliffe on its brim.”

“Could not even speak Acroparthianic Greek,

And she’d no instruction in Theology.

One day she found, as she swam around,

A Radcliffe catalogue,

Which shone afar like an evening star

From out the mist and fog.

She paused to rest on a billow’s crest,

In a wreath of sparkling foam,

And when she had read what the catalogue said,

She decided to leave her home.

She saw at once that she was a dunce

And ought to go to college.

So dressed in her best with a hat from Céleste,

She set out for the shrine of knowledge.

The cars were so filled she was almost killed,

But she found she could easily swim

Up Garden Street, that road so neat

That has Radcliffe on its brim.”

The last two lines were loudly applauded, for the mud of Garden Street was constantly ridiculed by the college girls to be beyond description. The song proceeded to describe the advent of the mermaid at Fay House:

“She told her race, and her boarding-place,And her age (less a year, maybe),But when the question came,‘What’s your grandma’s middle name?’She wept and turned to flee.”

“She told her race, and her boarding-place,

And her age (less a year, maybe),

But when the question came,

‘What’s your grandma’s middle name?’

She wept and turned to flee.”

“The regular Boston question,” said Clarissa, with an expression of scorn.

“Don’t interrupt,” cried Ruth, as Polly sang the chorus of each verse.

“Oh, the ocean swell is all very wellFor frivolous sport and play,But the cultured mind you’ll seldom findBeneath the salt sea spray.”

“Oh, the ocean swell is all very well

For frivolous sport and play,

But the cultured mind you’ll seldom find

Beneath the salt sea spray.”

Other songs followed this,—the “Hunting Song” from the “Princess Perfection,” snatches from one or two real operas; and at last as they sat around the open fire drinking lemonade—for the rarebit was now a thing of the past—Clarissa turned down the lights, and proposed that they should tell weird stories. No one of the eight or nine present was excused. Even Ernestine Dunton had to do her part, and she had unbent to an extent that was astonishing to Ruth and Clarissa; for in the preceding year when she had been their Senior adviser, she had seemed the personification of seriousness. She was now back at Radcliffe as a graduate student, and in certain ways she had begun to unbend.

As her friends bade her good-night, Clarissa knew that her party had been a success; for Polly, lingering a little behind the others, put out her hand and whispered, “You know that we don’t believe that you did that foolish thing, don’t you?” and Clarissa, returning the pressure, replied, “Of course you could not believe it.”

In spite of the surface frivolity, there was in Polly a strong vein of common sense. Therefore, as she thought more and more deeply about the newspaper article she became convinced that great injustice had been done Clarissa. She was naturally puzzled, for the notes so unkindly quoted were certainly from the Kansas girl’s note-book. Only too well she remembered having read them herself, and having laughed at some of the hits. But how had the newspaper obtained them? Without having talked with Clarissa directly, without having had more than the whispered word at the party, she yet knew that the Kansas girl was not to blame. She began to set her wits at work. To solve the mystery she must turn private detective.

One Wednesday afternoon she dropped into the pleasant drawing-room at Fay House; “the most homelike place,” she often said, “this side of Atlanta.” Indeed, many other Radcliffe girls were in the habit of saying the same thing, only instead of Atlanta they named Pittsburg, or Topeka, or Kalamazoo, or, in short, the particular city or town which each called her home.

“The first month I was in Cambridge,” Polly had said to the President, “I was right smart homesick and miserable. I felt like I couldn’t stand it. But when I came in here, and saw you seated at the tea-table, beside the open fire, I felt like I were with my grandmother, and that this was a place where I could lay aside all my forlornness. You don’t mind my comparing you to my grandmother? I reckon it isn’t perfectly polite.”

But the widow of the great scientist, who was proud to admit her threescore years and ten, smiled with her accustomed grace, saying in reply:

“No, indeed, my dear, I am only complimented by the comparison.”

Nor was Polly the only one who felt the restful influence of the drawing-room at Fay House; the quaint old-fashioned room, with its oval ends, curving outward, with its dull green satiny wall-paper, and the old-time couch and easy-chairs covered in flowered crimson.

Girls who entered it for the first time were impressed by the dainty silver and china of the tea-table, and they would turn from the life-size portrait of Mrs. Agassiz between the windows to the majestic figure of the President herself presiding over the teacups, and neither picture nor living figure suffered by the comparison.

On this particular Wednesday afternoon, not so very long after the publication of the alleged lecture of Professor Z in the yellow journal, Polly, after paying her respects to Mrs. Agassiz, seated herself at the further side of the room. She did not linger as was her wont around the tea-table, for two distinguished guests had entered just behind her. One was a Frenchwoman, of international reputation, and the other a distinguished Englishman, making a study of our institutions. The former was accompanied by a well-known member of the Harvard Faculty, and the latter by two Bostonians whom he was visiting.

“Isn’t it just lovely,” said a little Freshman seated near Polly, “to see such great people? That’s what I like about Boston and Cambridge. You’re always meeting people who seem to belong in books.”

“Yes,” replied Polly mockingly, “it’s a liberal education just to look at them. Let’s talk French, and see if our accent improves through breathing the same atmosphere with Madame X.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean exactly that,” replied the Freshman, “only we certainlydolearn things here that we couldn’t get out of books.”

“Yes, yes, dear, you’re certainly right, and I only wish that we could get yon Englishman to tell us how he manages to wear that monocle, and yet look perfectly happy.”

The Freshman glanced at Polly to see if she was in earnest, and made some remark to which Polly returned no answer.

Polly’s thoughts indeed had begun to wander, sent off by a word or two from a girl standing with her back to her.

“She hasn’t found it out yet, or she wouldn’t speak to her,” were the words that fell on her ear. Looking toward the door she saw that Clarissa had just entered, and had paused for a moment to say a word to Annabel, who as usual was the centre of an admiring group.

Clarissa passed on to pay her respects to the President; and while Polly was reflecting on what she had heard, she saw the girls in the group leave Annabel one by one to join Clarissa, standing at the other side of the fireplace. Annabel frowned as she moved toward Polly’s corner. She and the girl with her did not notice Polly, for they stood with their backs to her.

“Yes, it is rather bold—really very bold, but she never cares what any one thinks. She has so much—so much—”

“Effrontery, I should call it,” replied the other, who was well known to be a worshipper of a rising star, such as Annabel was now supposed to be. “But I know that you never like to say anything disagreeable.”

“Well, of course, one should be very careful;” and Annabel sighed the sigh of the needlessly perfect person.

Upon this, Polly, rising suddenly, faced around, and with a hasty nod to Annabel joined Clarissa at the other side of the room.

The few apparently unimportant words that she had heard had helped her far along with her detective work. She could not, however, altogether conceal her feelings, and slipping her arm through Clarissa’s, she led her back toward Annabel and her friends.

“Behold the rising star!” she exclaimed; “for of course,” she added in explanation, “you’ve heard that Clarissa is to have leading part in Julia’s operetta.”

“Why, Polly,” said Clarissa, “I had not—”

“Don’t contradict,” responded Polly, “our plans are made, and there isn’t a question but that you have the most manly tone, and gait, and—”

“Why, Annabel, I thought that you were to have the chief part!” interposed her friend.

“Oh, she’ll be in it,” rejoined Polly, in a somewhat patronizing tone, assumed for the occasion, “if not in the chief part.”

Then she moved away, still leaning on Clarissa’s arm, and Annabel had no chance to retort. The foreign guests had gone to inspect the other parts of Fay House, and the drawing-room was filling with girls whose lectures for the day had ended.

“Oh, Polly,” cried Clarissa, as the two friends left the room, after paying their respects to the President and Dean. “Why, Polly, I can’t act; I don’t belong with those girls at all. Ruth Roberts, you know, barely tolerates me, and she’s to be the manager.”

“Nonsense, she isn’t the whole thing. Besides, I happen to know that shedoeswant you.”

“What about Annabel?”

“Well, we can’t really leave her out. Her voice isn’t remarkable, but she acts pretty well; and since she’s been playing with the Cambridge Dramatic Club, she’s been considered our representative actor. Besides, she’s a great friend of Ruth’s.”

“I know it,” responded Clarissa. “You surely ought to have Annabel; but can I pull all right with those girls?”

“Of course, and I am to be a dapper little dandy. Though we are to be rivals in love, we can support each other.”

So at last Clarissa yielded, and after the mid-years, rehearsals went on pretty rapidly. There were, after all, several good parts in the operetta; and Ruth, viewing everything with the critical eye of a business manager, was certain that the performance would bring even more than she had hoped.

“Clarissa herself wouldn’t be so bad,” said Ruth one evening, as she and Julia sat in the study after dinner, “but I can’t say that I like her friends. She has a rather scrubby lot of hangers-on. Look at those two this afternoon!”

“Why, I saw nothing to criticise.”

“You never do, Julia, but they certainly hadn’t a word to say for themselves, and their clothes were frightful. Clarissa’s red coat is bad enough, but she is rather fine-looking, and she is so decidedly unlike any one else that you don’t have to apologize for her. But those others were so—so nondescript.”

“Ruth,” exclaimed Julia, with a shade of reproach, “you have changed very much the past year. You used to think Belle’s exclusiveness silly, but you are tending that way yourself.”

“You are not in earnest!”

“Of course, you’ll never be just like Belle. But you have begun to think too much about appearances.”

“But you are too amiable, Julia. As we can’t be intimate with all the girls we meet, we might as well choose the most congenial. We can’t let all kinds of girls take up our time.”

“My time isn’t so valuable. I can spare a little even to all kinds of girls.”

“Yes, but even on Mondays, sometimes, there are such queer girls. They make an unfavorable impression on people from town who call. Don’t you remember when Mrs. Blair came out? Now, if she had only met Annabel Harmon or Elizabeth Darcy, how different it would have been!”

“Annabel Harmon!” Julia wondered why she so disliked Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel, for Annabel was a popular girl, hardly less so than Elizabeth Darcy. She was well-bred and interesting. “I never can thoroughly trust any one who spends her spare time reading French books,” Clarissa had said laughingly, although Julia would have hesitated to put it quite so definitely.

Ruth, however, was apparently fascinated by Annabel, and constantly quoted her with admiration. Annabel had a dislike for plain things and plain people. By this, she was careful to explain, she did not mean necessarily things that were ugly or people who were poor. “Someugly things are really very beautiful, and some poor people are far from plain. The only kind of plainness that I object to is commonness; I hate ordinary things.”

Yet if any one had taken the trouble to note down the things that Annabel called “common,” it would have been found that in her eyes these were the inexpensive things, and the girls whom she described as ordinary were usually those who were not rich either in money or influential connections.

Julia saw that Ruth’s intimacy with Annabel had made a change in her, not altogether to be commended.

“I wish you liked Lois Forsaith as well as you like Annabel. I do wish that she had a little more fun. She takes life so seriously. Really, I can’t understand it. I should die, or at least I should want to, if I had as much to do.”

“She has only four courses this year.”

“Oh, I do not mean her studies entirely, but at home. She has a certain amount of housework to do. She helps her two younger brothers with their lessons, and she always has some regular sewing on hand.”

“Really!” exclaimed Ruth in some surprise. Julia had never said much to her about Lois’ family.

“They say that Lois would have had the highest record in the class last year if she hadn’t stayed out to nurse her little sister. It was just before the finals, and she had to lose one of her examinations.”

“Couldn’t she make it up?” asked Ruth.

“Oh, she will have a chance, but of course it makes a difference in her year’s record.”

“I never feel quite sure of Lois,” said Ruth. “She always has that far-away manner, as if she were looking right over your head. I am never sure that she remembers me.”

“Why, I have not noticed that,” responded Julia. “I think her delightful. She shakes hands so warmly, and she always says something worth hearing.”

“But I don’t think that she’s a really popular girl.”

“That’s not to her discredit. Popularity is no evidence of—of—”

And Julia hesitated, seemingly at a loss for a word.

“True greatness,” interposed Ruth. “No, popularity is not a test of true greatness. But I would not say that Lois is unpopular.”

“If Lois could, she would take a larger part in our social life,” added Julia. “It’s very hard for a girl to live at home while she’s going to college. It’s like serving two masters, and one of them has to suffer. Lois will get the most possible out of her studies, but she can’t be interested in every little thing.”

“You’re a regular champion,” and Ruth threw a kiss to Julia, as she turned to leave the room.

The added strain of rehearsals was more, perhaps, than some of the performers ought to have had. But few of them neglected lectures, and they buoyed themselves with the hope that all this work would be over before the middle of May, when they could devote themselves wholly to study.

Julia, perhaps, felt the strain more than the others. To do the operetta justice she gave up many things that she would have enjoyed. Rehearsals came so often on Fridays that she was rather glad that this year she had not attempted to attend the Symphony rehearsals in the City. She had taken four tickets for the Cambridge course, and Ruth and Mrs. Colton regularly accompanied her. The use of the fourth ticket she offered from time to time to various girls who had not subscribed for the course.

She had had to draw the line at social gaieties, although she made occasional exceptions, as, for instance, in the case of the coming-out parties of Brenda and Nora. She entered into both of these affairs with the zest of a débutante, and was greeted cordially by a number of those of whom she had seen so much during her first year in Boston. But she noticed that some of Brenda’s special friends either avoided her or treated her with a deference that made her uncomfortable, since her years did not seem to warrant it.

“It’s because you know so much,” Brenda had explained. “They’re afraid of you.”

“Well, they needn’t be. I’m sure that I never display my knowledge, and besides, I haven’t much to display. They’d find it out if they’d talk with me.”

“Oh, Julia! You do know a tremendous amount. I feel all shrivelled up when I think of it. Besides, every one has heard about the operetta. I feel proud enough, I can tell you, when any one speaks to me about it.”

“You used to object to a learned cousin.”

“I don’t now, as long as she doesn’t make her learning a reproach to me. That’s one thing very nice about you, Julia, you never scold me for not going to college.”

“You may come to it yet. Besides, you are studying this winter, are you not?”

“Now, Julia, don’t ask me how many times I’ve gone to my Literature class. There’s so often a luncheon or something more interesting that comes the same day, and when there isn’t I’m too tired to enjoy it. So I’ve missed more or less, but there’s a Current Events on Mondays and I’m always there. It gives me something to talk about, and I’m thankful enough, with a stupid partner, to fall back on Armenian atrocities, or the Abolition of the House of Lords, or even the Silver Question.”

“A little learning is a dangerous thing,” quoted Julia, and Brenda replied brightly:

“But less is more dangerous, and Nora says—there, that reminds me, have you heard of the engagement?”

“Not Nora’s?” queried Julia.

“No, indeed. Nora says that she’s going to Radcliffe next year, and she isn’t likely to let herself be interfered with by anything so frivolous as an engagement. But I should think that you might have guessed. It’s Frances.”

“I’ve had suspicions,” responded Julia, “from a letter Frances wrote me some time ago.”

“Yes, she’s always been so chummy with you since that time she thinks you saved her life. But I was surprised, and isn’t it funny that he’s a minister, at least he’s going to be? This is his last year in the Divinity School. Just imagine Frances a minister’s wife!”

“It would have been harder to imagine a year or two ago.”

“Yes, Frances has changed since that accident, and then, of course, he’s her second cousin—or third—and she can do lots of good with her money,” Brenda concluded somewhat incoherently.

Although Julia did not go to many parties, she yet had more or less enjoyment from certain phases of Boston life. Her aunt’s house was still “home,” and thither she went every Saturday. Many Radcliffe students, like their fellow-students at the University, were surprised to find that Saturday was not a holiday, and that only by a skilful arrangement of courses could one have the day free. But on Saturday afternoon, all who could went home or paid visits. At her aunt’s behest Julia often took with her one guest or another to the Beacon Street house, and often after dinner a little party went to a reading, or a lecture by some great authority, or to a musicale. Julia always regretted that Pamela could so seldom be one of her Saturday guests. But Pamela, who, in this her second year at Miss Batson’s, was less sensitive than formerly about her position, was apt to say laughingly that Sunday was her busy day, since all the young ladies were then at home.

She might have added that she never liked to miss the Sunday morning service in the little Memorial Chapel beyond the Washington Elm. There, as in other churches, seats were reserved for Radcliffe students. The music and the liturgy, so unlike the simple Congregational service to which she had been accustomed, rested and helped her, and she atoned for departing from the rigid forms of her father’s church by holding a little Bible Class at Miss Batson’s on Sunday afternoon. There in the dining-room she collected three or four small girls from the quarry district some distance away, and gave them a helping hand, and taught them many things that they could hardly have learned from books. No wonder that she could not accept Julia’s invitations! If she had had no other reasons she would have plead that she was not in touch with the young circle that gathered in Mrs. Barlow’s hospitable house. Occasionally she went there to dine on Saturday. This was usually after she had paid a visit to the Art Museum, where her beloved Tanagra figures and the Parthenon friezes still charmed her. She had had some scruples this year in electing Fine Arts, for she knew that it was considered one of the soft courses chosen by certain students more anxious to get marks than to learn. But if many other students had taken Fine Arts in Pamela’s spirit, it would soon have ceased to be a reproach. For she verified every statement in her text-book, and looked up every reference made by her professor, and some of her friends laughingly plead with her not to set the standard so high, as henceforth every student taking the course would be expected to do equally well.

Pamela was not in the operetta, for the artistic side of her nature had not been developed in the direction of music. Yet from time to time she looked in at rehearsals. She was proud of Julia’s work, for she felt as if no success could be too great for one who had been so kind to her. She was fond of Polly, too, and she had enough good sense not to be offended even when the laugh was directed against the class of girls of which she herself was a type. For though she was only one of many who were at Radcliffe for study exclusively, she felt that she could bear a little ridicule, since the butterflies themselves were sure to come in for a share.

She was interested, too, in Clarissa’s part in the operetta; and although she knew that many otherwise charitable girls had held Clarissa in suspicion since the publication of the newspaper article, she, too, like Polly, had more faith in the Western girl. She even thought of doing a little detective work herself, in a quiet way.

One mild morning in early May a group of girls stood at the foot of the side entrance to Fay House. “Get your hats! get your hats!” cried Polly, approaching the group from the house. “I’m going home for the largest hat I own, and I intend to tie it on with a veil.”

Clarissa and one or two of the other hatless girls began to ask Polly her meaning. But Polly, declining to answer, walked off with a paper, apparently a letter, held dramatically to her heart.

Clarissa followed her to the shade of a tree at the edge of the tennis ground, and there Polly read the note to her:

“My dear Miss Porson,—May I see you Friday or Saturday between nine and eleven o’clock.”

“My dear Miss Porson,—May I see you Friday or Saturday between nine and eleven o’clock.”

And the signature was that of the Dean.

“Yes,” said Polly reminiscently, “it’s true that I’ve been walking hatless to the Square,—like several others I could mention,” and she glanced significantly toward Clarissa.

“But you ought to know,” said Elspeth Gray, who had joined them, “that that isn’t the thing in a conventional place like Cambridge.”

“Yes, but going without a hat seems to be in the direction of the plain living and high thinking toward which we’re always encouraged.”

“But what did the Dean say to you, Polly? I cannot imagine her being unduly severe.”

“She wasn’t severe. She couldn’t be. I left her feeling not that I had been reproved, but simply advised.”

“Was nothing said about sitting on the stairs? I saw you on the landing yesterday, and some of our instructors complain bitterly of this. They say that it is too much like the behavior of schoolgirls, and—”

“As long as they express their feelings merely in words,” responded Clarissa, “I can bear it. I wish that they would bestow our marks upon us in words. A postal card is so much harder to bear when it is stamped officially, ‘French Department. Your mark in French 11 is C.’ The big, blue ‘C’ that they make of such an enormous size, sprawled across the card.”

“I never mind,” said Elizabeth, who had joined the others.

“Nor would we,” responded Clarissa politely, “if our marks, like yours, were most likely ‘A.’ You see the postmen, like the policemen and the car conductors in this cultured community, set a value on real intellect, and I hate to have them know that I am not at the very head of my class. I don’t wish to sail under false pretences, but I should be happier if my instructors would only spare me the big, blue ‘C.’ It always makes me feel giddy, as the English say.”

“Oh, Clarissa, you’d pun if you were dying.”

“Well, I can afford to be cheerful, for I’ve had an invitation,” and she read from a card that she drew from a note-book, “Le Cercle Français de l’Université Harvard requests the pleasure of your presence on Tuesday evening, May 17.”

“You are in luck. I hear that it is to be a delightful affair; but now before we go home for our hats, let us stroll over to Vaughan House, and patronize Mrs. Hogan and her buns.”

A luncheon-room had been fitted up in Vaughan House, a dwelling recently bought by the Radcliffe Corporation. It was only a step from Fay House, across the little campus, and both inside and out it preserved the aspect of a comfortable dwelling. The lunch-room, to be sure, had small wood tables of true restaurant style and a counter; and the coffee and chocolate were drawn from metal reservoirs, with spigots, in true restaurant fashion.

The three friends, for Elizabeth had not come with them, sat at a table beside an old graduate, who was spending the year in Cambridge for post-graduate work.

“Why, it doesn’t seem long,” she said, “since we used to carry our own sandwiches to Fay House in a little pasteboard box, and feel extremely thankful for the cup of hot tea or chocolate brought by the housekeeper to the little room back of the conversation room. If she went off before we could pay her, we would hide our dimes or half-dimes in the sugar bowl, and she always trusted us as we trusted her.”

“Can you remember the very beginning of Radcliffe?” asked Polly, “when it was called ‘The Annex’?”

“I wasn’t here myself, then,” said the other, smiling; “that was in 1879, but my sister came a year or two later, when the classes met either at the houses of the professors or in the little house in Appian Way. The library, I believe, comprised two or three shelves of books in another house, and a course with half a dozen students was considered extremely large.”

“Just think of it!”

“My own experience goes back to 1886 when we moved into Fay House. But it was so different then. I sometimes wonder if you students of to-day realize your advantages.”

“I rather think that we have more fun,” said Polly. “I am afraid that you used to take life too seriously.”

The older girl smiled.

“We had to be very much in earnest because we felt that if we made our college work secondary to social interests we were likely to be criticised. The college girl was not so numerous then as she is now, and she was a target for almost any one who wished to criticise her. But I don’t blame you undergraduates for getting all the fun you can, and your music and your athletics in many ways must be very beneficial.”

“She means you, Clarissa. She has heard what an ornament you are to the R. A. A.,” cried Polly.

“Oh, no; you mean Polly, do you not?” asked Clarissa of the graduate. “You have heard of her prowess as an actor, and then you know she’s written nearly all the book for the operetta. The rest of us have just put in a few jokes.”

“I have had my eye on you both,” responded the older girl, “and I approve of you, for you have not yet begun to make study secondary to fun.”

Nor was the graduate wrong in her criticism. While work may have been to a certain extent neglected by the actors and singers in the operetta in the weeks immediately preceding the performance, they all knew that when the rehearsals were over they would work with redoubled energy.

The advance sale of tickets was so good that Ruth went about with a beaming face. She was interested in the North End reading-room to a rather unusual extent, and had set her heart on their clearing five hundred dollars from the two performances.

A week before the last rehearsal Julia had asked Angelina to spend all her time in Cambridge. There were so many little things that she could do in helping the girls about their costuming that it seemed as well to have her near for a week or two. Angelina could be spared, and Julia knew that the week or two in Cambridge would be almost as thoroughly a treat to her as a trip to New York to many another girl. Angelina had become more reconciled to her life at Shiloh, although she still continued to say frankly that she would prefer the city. Yet she had so enjoyed being of acknowledged use to her mother, and Julia had so praised her for her growing skill in housekeeping, that she was almost reconciled to her quiet life. All “The Four” had continued their interest in the Rosas. Brenda and Nora had provided their Christmas tree, with assistance, of course, from Julia. Julia had planned a little collection of books arranged in two or three small travelling libraries for the use of the Rosas and their neighbors, and when a check of good size came from Edith, to be applied to the use of the family, there was hardly any evident need to supply.

Edith and her parents were in Europe. They had felt keenly the fact that Philip had left college under a cloud, and it was even rumored that they might stay away another year. Julia, naturally enough, thought often of Philip, for that last interview with him had been rather thrilling, and while many of her friends were planning for the coming Class Day, she had made up her mind to leave Cambridge as soon as she could after the examinations. “If I live through the operetta,” she said to herself, for she felt the strain of the last rehearsals. When she thought of Philip, putting even the most charitable construction on his silence, it seemed as if he might have written to her.

Indeed it was only by a chance word dropped by Nora and other girls that she heard anything about him. They had their information from their brothers or some of their friends. Julia herself might have heard more directly had she been willing to bring up Philip’s name to Tom Hearst or some of his friends. But she would not ask questions, feeling as she did that Philip might have kept her informed of his whereabouts. Yet she knew that he had spent the most of the winter on a ranch in South Dakota, not so very far from the Black Hills; and when reports of the extreme cold in that region came to Eastern readers, who wondered how Philip enjoyed this rather hard life—Philip who had been used to all the luxuries provided for a rich man’s son at Harvard. But Philip did not write, and Julia would not ask even Ruth about him, although Ruth and Will Hardon were great friends.

It was the last rehearsal but one, not the dress rehearsal, but the “half-dressed rehearsal,” as Clarissa called it. At the dress rehearsal a large number of undergraduates, and special friends of the performers were to be admitted, and then was to come the performance from which so much was hoped. But the dress rehearsal would be so much like a real performance that the present occasion was regarded as something very important.

Nearly all the chorus were wearing the short peasant skirt, and strutted about seeming on the whole well pleased with their own appearance. But the prima donnas were in ordinary attire, for their bespangled robes were too elaborate to be dragged about on the dusty stage. Polly and Ruth in bicycle skirts were rushing among the players, now giving directions to this one, then to that.

“You must stand better, and do come nearer to the front; and when Miss Harmon is singing, look toward her. You are supposed to be hanging on every word of hers (which we’re not usually in reality).”

The last words, of course, weresotto voce, and the chorus for the time being made a great effort to obey the energetic Ruth. Occasionally some girl, forgetting how much depended on her, would draw her neighbor aside for a tête-à-tête, to the great annoyance of the energetic managers.

Julia, in her chair in the centre of the floor below the stage, held the score, and from time to time contributed her word of criticism. But she was glad enough to have Clarissa and Annabel and Polly and Ruth bear the most responsibility, as it troubled her to have to pay too much attention to details. Clarissa and Annabel were lovers in the play, and to Polly this seemed rather ridiculous, feeling as she did that she had special insight into the dislike of Annabel for Clarissa. Clarissa, however, seemed unaware that Annabel was less than friendly; and although the latter was not always as perfectly amiable as the Princess in a light opera ought to be, the rehearsals had, on the whole, passed off pretty well. Polly herself, as it happened, was almost the centre of interest in the play. This had come about by accident rather than by actual intention on the part of Julia. She was a disguised Queen, disguised as a youth of humble birth, who had escaped from court for a frolic, whose grace and wit carried everything before her. Although she was apparently Clarissa’s rival for a while, everything was explained when at the very end her disguise was revealed. The operetta abounded in pleasing duets, bright dialogues, and witty hits and gibes. But the jokes and hits were never bitter nor purely personal. They were directed against the peculiarities of certain groups of students rather than against the students themselves. Cambridge, too, came in for its share of ridicule, although the jokes on this subject were rather threadbare, as they had all been used in other years by Harvard or Radcliffe undergraduates, in their dramatic performances or college publications.

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