Miss Mordaunt hesitated to throw further cold water. Life itself would bring the chill splash soon enough.
"Well—perhaps," she admitted. "Only, it is always wiser not to look forward too confidently. Things turn out so unlike what one expects beforehand. Have you not found it so?"
"I'm sure this won't. It will all come right, I know. But just imagine father talking about my having 'finished my education.' Oh dear me, if he would but understand! He says his own sisters finished theirs at seventeen, and he doesn't see any need for new-fangled ways. You may read it!" Magda held out the sheet with an indignant thrust. "As if it mattered what they used to do in the Dark Ages."
Miss Mordaunt could not quite suppress another smile. She read the letter and gave it back.
"That settles the matter, I am afraid. I see that your father wants his daughter."
"He doesn't!" bluntly. "He wants nobody except Merryl. 'Finished my education' indeed! Why, I'm not seventeen till next month; and I'm only just beginning to know what real work means."
Miss Mordaunt could have endorsed this; but an interruption came. She was called away; and Magda wandered to one of the class-rooms, where, as she expected, she found a girl alone bending over a desk, hard at work—a girl nearly as tall as herself, but so slight in make that people often spoke of her as "little;" the more so, perhaps, from her gentle retiring manner, and from the look of wistful appeal in her brown eyes. It was a pale face, even-featured, with rather marked dark brows and brown hair full of natural waves. As Magda entered she jumped up.
"I've been wanting to see you, Magda. Only think—"
"I went to tell Miss Mordaunt—father has written at last."
"Has he? And he says—?"