"Well, what then?" queried three or four voices.
"I'd find some way of finishing it out at twenty-five."
"Oh, you couldn't," cried Daisy, shocked.
"Well, there are sisterhoods in churches and they are very respectable. My great-aunt Roxalana has been married twice, both times to rich men. She's eighty-six now and looks like a fright, though it is said she was a very pretty young woman. It's safe to say that when your compeers are all dead. Oh, I do hope I will never outlive my beauty."
They all laughed at that.
Days were divided up like clock-work. You were called at six while the mornings were light. Breakfast was at seven. At eight there was a study period. Quarter before nine they assembled in the small seated room called the chapel, by courtesy, and at nine went into the schoolroom. At eleven they had ten minutes' recreation, then study until twelve; an hour for luncheon, and two hours' study and recitation again. Two afternoons a week music lessons. Dinner from five to six; from seven to nine study period, unless one could get through sooner.
Helen thought this first day that she had never really studied in her life. She had a quick memory, at least, so it had always seemed, and an absolute genius for mathematics. History, as far as she had gone, was a delight. But the Latin! Was there any sense in it? Did the old Romans talk in that tongue? And what was the use of it now, when Rome itself was Italian.
"You will understand the use of it by and by," said Miss Lane. "I am afraid, so far, what you have acquired has come too easy, but a year hence you will be laughing over this when you hear some other girls moan."
If the Latin was a trial, the music was still more so. When slim fingers glided over the keys with chords of melody it penetrated her very soul, and she just drew in long breaths of delight. But hers were not slim fingers and running up and down the scale seemed as much beyond her as conversing in Latin.
"You are in too great a hurry. You go too hard, with too much force," said Madame Meran.