'No, my dear, no; I suppose not. Some girls have the knack of it, and some women, I've heard my mother say, may churn for hours and the butter will refuse to come. Dick's wife, your mother, my dear——'
'Great-grandmother,' murmured Lucy almost inaudibly. The Master hated to be contradicted, and he was always telling her that these far-off ancestors were her father and mother, this humble ploughman and his homely wife. There had been two generations of culture between, and Lucy had quite forgotten, until her uncle reminded her, that her great-grandmother used to carry her eggs and her butter to market. The worst of it was he used to tell everybody it was her mother.
'Yes, yes,' the Master repeated testily; 'my memory is not what it was. But it does not much matter which. She was a good woman; she did her duty here; she brought up a long family—nine children—and she has gone to her reward. She did not know a word of Greek or Latin, and she only knew enough mathematics to reckon up the price of eggs; but if she had gone to Girton or Newnham she could not have done more. She did her duty here; after all, that is the great thing, my dear. There is nothing else that will bring comfort at the last.'
It was a delightful reflection. It comforted the old scholar who had done his duty in this place for over sixty years, who had done it so well that by common consent men called him Master; but it didn't comfort Lucy at all. She was quite prepared to do her duty, only she wanted to do it in her own way.
There were other difficulties in the way of Lucy going to Newnham beside the Master's prejudices. There was a dreadful ordeal to be gone through before those sacred portals would be opened to admit her.
There was the entrance examination. The Senior Tutor was as good as his word; he brought Lucy over the very next day, not only the papers set at the last 'Previous' examination, but a copy of the last Newnham entrance papers. The next examination was to take place in March, and it was now the middle of February, and there were only a few weeks to prepare for it.
Lucy looked hurriedly through the papers while the Tutor stood by, and he saw her face fall and the pretty April colour, which was Lucy's especial charm, go out of her cheeks.
'They are stiffer than you thought,' he said.