THE HEAD DECIDES
Miss Arden was writing at the table in the middle of the room when Dorothy entered. She looked up and motioned to a low chair near the window. “Sit there for a few minutes, Dorothy; I shall not be long before I am free to talk to you.”
Dorothy sat down, and instinctively her glance went out to that bit of shining sea visible through the gap in the trees, which the Head had pointed out to her a week ago. It was an evening just like that one had been, with the sun shining on the water, and the trees so still that they did not sway across that little patch of brightness.
Presently the Head finished writing, rang the bell for the letters to be taken away for posting, and then, leaving her writing table, came over to sit by Dorothy at the open window.
“How has your work gone this week?” she asked a little abruptly. Then, seeing that Dorothy seemed puzzled, she went on speaking in her crisp tones, “I was not asking in reference to your school position—I know all about that. I wanted to know how you had felt about your work, and whether it was easier because of our talk last week.”
Dorothy’s face flashed into smiles, and she answered eagerly, “Oh, it was much easier, thank you. I have had no worry of responsibility, you see. I have been free to keep on working without any wonder as to whether I had the right to work in that special way.”
The Head nodded in sympathetic fashion, and was silent for a few minutes, as if she were still considering that decision of hers; then she asked, “Are you willing to trust the responsibility to me for the rest of the term?”
Dorothy looked blank. “I don’t think I quite understand,” she said. “It is for you to decide what I have to do.”
The Head laughed, then flung out her hands with a little gesture of helplessness as she answered, “I know the decision rests with me. The trouble is that I cannot at the present see any light on the situation. Until that comes you have just to go on as you are doing now. You have to make the very bravest fight you can. You have to work and to struggle—to do your very best; and having done this, you have to wait in patience for the issue of it all.”
“I can do that, of course,” said Dorothy; but her tone was a little doubtful—it was even a little disappointed. It was a hard-and-fast decision she craved: a pronouncement that could not be set aside—which put an end to hope and fear, and that left her nothing to be anxious about.