Janet's college career

by Amy Ella Blanchard

But Teddy answered savagely, "I wish you had never seen Polly Perkins."

"Why Teddy Waite," exclaimed Janet. But her color heightened and she bit her lip.

"Yes, I do," declared Teddy, "and how you can do everything in your power to make her attractive to Van Austin passes my comprehension. After all his devotion to you last summer; all those moonlight sails, those walks and drives, all those glances and low tones and followings of you around, I don't see how you can endure Polly."

Janet sat gravely gazing off into vacancy. She knew it was very true that there had been cause for her to believe that Van Austin's devotion meant more than a summer flirtation.

"To think you are so loyal and noble a friend to that girl, and she repays you by stealing—"

"Stop," Janet raised her hand. "Don't get into heroics, Ted. In the first place, Polly hasn't an idea of all that, and in the second place, I am not noble. I came as near as anything to allowing the opportunity to pass. It flashed across my mind as soon as I heard that Louise wanted to dispose of those things, and I said to myself, 'This is Polly's chance,' but I didn't mean to tell her. I thought I would let her find it out, if there was any way for her to, and if not, I would let it go. Then I thought of that line of Emerson's: 'What does not come to us is not ours.' If that did not come to me—naturally come to me, it wasn't mine. If I should allow myself to struggle for it, and should appear to have secured it, still it would not be mine. It has come to Polly. She has made no effort to secure it. It is hers. I have no right to it."

"Janet Ferguson, that is all nonsense. If you had not made it possible for Polly, it would not have come to her. Of course if one doesn't make the slightest effort to keep a thing, it is likely to slip from her. You simply stepped aside and let Polly have a clean sweep."

"It wasn't quite as you imagine it," said Janet. "When you discover that a hero is simply an every-day, ordinary man, who can be vacillating and inconstant, he loses his starry crown and you find that instead of worshiping something that actually exists you have been worshiping an ideal, and the hero is merely a creation of your own imagination, not flesh and blood but an accumulation of dreams and illusions. When you learn that an echo is merely the rebounding of the sound of your own voice why—" She shrugged her shoulders expressively and was silent.

Teddy sat looking at her gravely. She wondered how much of this was a real philosophy and how much was meant only to cover real feeling.

"Besides," Janet went on, "if it were all so, if I really did care, what sort of woman would I be to deprive that lovely child of the things which she has a right to? She has endured poverty and privation; I have always had comforts and luxuries. Her life has been a struggle; she has had to pinch and screw and contrive, and I have never had to think of real economies. What would I be worth if when this good thing came her way, I should stand in the path and prevent her from having it?"