Dorothy looked at him in surprise; even now, so restrained and controlled was his manner, she did not realize how furiously angry he was, but supposed that he had called her out because of her being a new girl, and that her position in the school would in some way be determined by what she could do now. It had been the custom in her old school for girls to have to stand up and talk in class; and although this was a much more formidable affair, she was not so much embarrassed as she would have been but for her training in the past.
Speaking in a rather low tone, she began at the beginning. In many places she quoted the professor’s own words. Once she left out a little string of facts, and went back over her ground, marshalling them into the proper place, and then went steadily on up to the very point where the professor stopped so suddenly.
The silence in the lecture hall was such as could be felt; some of the girls, indeed, were sitting open-mouthed with amazement at such a feat of memory. But there was a ghost of a smile hovering about the lips of Miss Groome—she was thinking how the professor would have to apologize to the new girl for having so misjudged her.
If Professor Plimsoll was fiery in temper, he was also a very just man. The girls must have known he had been angry, even though Dorothy did not seem to have realized it, and it was due to himself, and to them, that he should make what amends he could.
“Miss Dorothy Sedgewick,” he began, and he bowed to her as impressively as he might have done to royalty, “I have to beg your pardon for having entirely misunderstood you. When I saw that you took no notes I was angry at what I thought was your laziness, and new girl though you were, I determined to make an example of you, and that was why I called you forward in this fashion. I do apologize most sincerely for my blunder, and I am charmed to think that I shall have a student so able and painstaking at my lectures this term.”
Great embarrassment seized upon Dorothy now. She turned scarlet right up to the roots of her hair as she bowed, murmuring something inaudible, and then she escaped to her seat amidst a storm of cheering from the excited girls.
Professor Plimsoll held up his hand for silence. The lecture went on to its end, but it is doubtful whether Dorothy got much benefit from the latter part. The girls all around her were showing their sympathy each after her kind, but she was angry with herself because she had lacked the penetration to see that she had really been an object of pity.
When the lecture was over, and they all streamed out of hall carrying their notebooks, they fell upon her, cheering her again, and patting her on the back with resounding thumps just by way of showing friendliness.
“Oh, Dorothy, you were great!” cried Hazel, struggling through the crowd to reach her. “It was priceless to see you standing there beside my lord, giving him back his old lecture on creepy-crawlies as calmly as if you had been brought up to that kind of thing from infancy. His eyes gogged and gogged until I thought they would have come right out of their sockets! And then to see the way he climbed down and grovelled at your feet, oh, it was rich!”
“Dorothy, how did you remember it all?” cried Margaret, thrusting several girls aside and coming eagerly close up to Dorothy.