"Not at all, but I can't quite reconcile gold bars of Heaven with twenty-six inches round the waist."
"Some people haven't the soul to appreciate poetry properly."
"That's true," chirped Ermie unabashed. "I dare say the Miss Miltons voted 'that poem of Dad's' awful slow. It was certainly 'Paradise Lost' to them to have to sit and write at his dictation when they probably wanted to be out picking blackberries or feeding the hens. I've always felt sorry for those three girls. I hope they all found decent husbands, poor dears! The literature book doesn't tell us any more about them, and they're far more interesting to me than their stern old father. When I write a literature book, I shall put things in their proper focus. 'Celebrities from a Girl's Point of View' I mean to call it. Yes, I'm in earnest! Don't snigger, all of you! I'll publish it some day and then you'll just see. Oh yes, glorify Regina into 'the Blessed Damozel' if you like. I don't mind what names you call her. 'Blessed Damson' would do for me. Ta-ta!"
Though the girls joked about Regina, and even teased her, there was a certain amount of liking mixed with their chaff. They all agreed that she was 'rather a sport'. Her amazing cleverness absolutely took their breath away. They would almost have resented it if Regina herself had set any store by it. She would finish her mathematical problems in a few minutes, while her schoolmates were still staring at them, and would sit with arms folded and answers ready when the rest of the form were helplessly beating their brains. She saw at once that it gave offence, and apologized in her abrupt manner.
"I can't help it. I just see the answers somehow and write them down."
"Couldn't you fiddle about with your pencil and look as if you were still working?" urged Calla's injured voice. "It makes Miss Pratt on the warpath to see you sitting up so soon. She said, 'Aren't you finished yet, girls?' this morning, very acidly. I think you might try to spin things out for our sakes."
In the matter of memorizing, also, Regina's nimble brains utterly outdistanced those of her companions. She took home the history book and read up all the portions which Va had taken during the two previous terms, proving a far better acquaintance with it at revision classes than the rest of the form, and bringing out dates with enviable accuracy.
"I can't help it," was still her protest. "It's as easy to remember a right date as a wrong one. They stick in my head somehow. If I see them once I know them."
"You're a genius, I suppose," sighed Kathleen. "There ought to be a special form for geniuses. It's not right to wedge them in amongst ordinary girls."
Yet all the time it was the ordinary girls whom Regina admired. Her own movements were awkward and jerky, but she would watch fascinated while dainty Alice Orton, the dunce, even of Vb, performed a scarf dance, and she came to school one day in such a palpable though indifferently made copy of Agnes Clifford's fashionable dress of Saxe blue gabardine, that some of the girls openly giggled in the cloakroom, an offence for which she never really forgave them. After three weeks of worshipping at Lesbia's shrine Regina one morning blurted out an invitation. In her characteristic fashion she gave it without any preamble. She simply said abruptly: