“I can’t seem to—face it,” wept Peggy. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me that all of a sudden I want, want, want this and nothing else in the world has any effect to comfort me. Oh, Katherine, Katherine, since I was a little girl I’ve kind of thought way back in my mind that I’d get to go to college. And all this wonderful year has drifted away just like perfume, or something nice like that,—I don’t mean to be poetical—and here it’s gone and I haven’t any plans. It’s terrible to grow up, Katherine, and to have to work out something definite for yourself to do. I don’t want to be grown up, Katherine, I want to be a girl for four years more. I know I’m a pig, honey, and if there were bigger things left to want I suppose I’d want them, too. And even when I graduated from college, if I did go, I guess I’d not be content, but I’d want to be an actress and star in something, so as to seem to be having it all. I wish you’d been asleep instead of questioning me, because I’ll feel awfully in the morning to think I’ve told you all this. I—I feel badly enough right now.”
And the goldy head went down on the folded paper and the writing on it was soon blotted and blurred with tears. Katherine slipped out of bed and, running over to her room-mate, threw her arms around her neck.
“It isn’t anything unusual to want everything that way, honey,” she said, “I won’t have you think that it is. Everybody in the whole world wants it all, dear. Only all to some people means different things from what it does to us. You aren’t piggish, either, I’ve known you a whole year and you and I have never quarreled over anything in all that time, and that’s a record for room-mates even at Andrews. And my folks never flattered me by thinking me unselfish, so it isn’t my fault things ran so smoothly—it was your generous, happy spirit, ready to share everything, wanting to help everybody, eager for good times, and able to take all the other girls into them with you. Oh, Peggy, dear, it’s the most natural thing in the world to want things—and I think there’s a cog loose somewhere in the way things are run if you don’t get your wish, that’s all. You are the very one that ought to have college. Please don’t cry. You look so different from my Peggy when you cry. I’m so much more used to you laughing.”
Putting aside the friendly arms of her room-mate, Peggy wiped her eyes and snapped out the light. With a final little gasp of a sob she crept into bed and covered her forlorn young face with the bed clothes. She expected that she would be awake all night, thinking heartbrokenly of her troubles, but instead she had no more than gotten snuggled down into the couch’s warmth than she was sound asleep and not in any of her dreams did any trouble whatsoever make its appearance.
Katherine, on the other hand, lay awake nearly ten minutes and told Peggy in the morning, believing it was true, of course, that she had not slept one wink.
In due time a letter came to Peggy from her aunt in answer to the one she had written with so many tears that night.
“Dear Peggy, Your letter made me think matters over very carefully, little girl, and I have gone over our resources with the disheartening result that I must tell you I do not see how I am to let you go to college this year. Now, Peggy, you are young and even after several years outside of school, it will not be too late for you to go to college if financial affairs turn out better. But just at this time, when everything is so uncertain, and prices are so high and so few stocks are paying dividends, I do not see how I can possibly spare enough for you to go to Hampton. There are a great many nice girls here, Peggy, about your age, who are not going to school any more, and never even thought of such a thing. I’m sure you can make quite a little social set with them, and I shall take you around to call on all of my friends, and finally give you a small coming out party, for every well-bred girl ought to care for society and desire to please by what she has already learned. I think that after a year of what quiet but agreeable society life you can have here at home, you will not want to go to college. And to tell the truth, Peggy, I have never thought much of college for girls. It seems to me woman’s place is in the home and in her own little social sphere. I know this letter will be a disappointment to you, but you are a sweet, brave girl, if a bit inclined to be rompish, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me in time when you’ve had a chance to think things over. Regretting that I cannot let you have your wish, though, whether I approve or not, I am,
Very lovingly yours,
—— Aunt Mattie.“
Peggy’s mouth twitched into her characteristic smile, dimple and all, and she gazed somewhat ruefully back over the closely written sheet.
“Fancy me a society lady,” she said to herself. “Oh, I never imagined even in my wildest dreams that I should get to be that—nor ever wanted it, either, if I tell the truth. I love parties and I adore people and hope always to have lots of them around me, men and women and children and everybody. But just to make a sort of career out of visiting and dancing—oh, I want college.”
All the indefinite longing that the spring brings with it took the shape in Peggy’s mind of this one paramount desire. If she could go to college she would be happy. If she could not, she must be miserable. Ashamed of herself for her attitude she might be, but crush the wish she could not. Katherine had had her application in at Hampton for three years now and had so been assigned a room on campus with another girl named Gloria Hazeltine. Peggy felt that already she was dropping out of her room-mate’s life. The other girls were all planning their next year, at table, outside the class-rooms, on their way to Vespers on Sundays. But she had nothing to plan. And the idea began to form in her mind that if she had some definite idea it would be better—even if the idea involved something hard and unheard of like earning her own living. At least there would be excitement in the contemplation of actually doing it.