"I suppose that's Professor Hoffmann's affair," said Bess Harrison, taking up the cudgels on Mildred's behalf. "He'd have asked Ella if he'd wanted her."
"Think how tremendously it will make us score in the Alliance," urged Maudie Stearne. "I don't for a moment suppose that even the High School or the Anglo-German will have a girl playing at the Professor's concert. We'll beat them there, even if they take it out of us at games."
"Lottie may be our delegate, but Mildred's our music champion just now," declared Clarice Mayfield.
"We've got to keep her at it, though," added Bess.
It was a new thing to Mildred to work diligently and painstakingly as she had done for the last few weeks. It was quite against her natural inclination, and I fear that if it had not been for the thought of what St. Cyprian's expected from her, she would never have kept it up. As it was, she felt almost astonished at her own perseverance. Time after time she was tempted not to trouble about the "Frühlingslied", but to play instead the tunes that came into her mind, and enjoy herself.
"After all, why should one fag so terribly at a thing? I hate slogging," she confided to her chum, Kitty Fletcher.
"Why? Because you owe it to yourself and the school," exclaimed Kitty. "If I'd your talent, I'd be slaving. Do you think I'd do anything in games if I didn't train? Mildred Lancaster, you've just got to try. Some day I'm going to see your name painted on the board in the lecture hall, so please don't disappoint me."
There was a large board at St. Cyprian's on which were recorded the successes of former pupils who had gained distinction either by taking university or musical degrees. To find, some time, "Mildred Lancaster" emblazoned thereon in gold letters was an attractive goal of ambition. But between the present and that rosy prospect lay a long, dreary expanse of continual effort—effort which Mildred's artistic temperament hated and shrank from, the drudgery upon which every solid achievement must be built, and without which even the cleverest of people can accomplish little.