Dorothy shivered a little. Rhoda’s voice made her feel bad just then. It was to her a most awful thing that a girl who knew herself guilty of deliberate theft should rise and affirm with uplifted hand that she was morally fit to compete for the Lamb Bursary.
“Perhaps she didn’t care over-much for him,” said Daisy Goatby with a windy sigh. “Getting married must be an awful fag. She could look forward to being free when the old man died; but if she had married, she might never have been free, don’t you see.”
“I think she was a martyr, poor dear.” Dorothy had the same vibrant sound in her voice as when she rose to affirm, and the other girls dropped silent to listen to what she had to say.
“Why do you think she was a martyr?” asked Margaret softly, seeing that Dorothy paused.
“Because she sacrificed everything to a principle.” Dorothy flushed a little as she spoke; she was too new to her surroundings to feel at ease in making her standpoints clear, and she was oppressed also by Rhoda’s bravado in affirming, in spite of that damaging incident at Sharman and Song’s.
“There was no principle involved that I can see,” grumbled Joan Fletcher with wrinkled brows. “There was self-sacrifice if you like, although, to my way of thinking, even that was uncalled for, seeing that the old man had the money to pay for any service he might require. I am not going to grumble at her for putting aside her happiness, because if I win the bursary I shall be so much the better off in consequence of her deciding to sacrifice herself for her uncle.”
“I think Dorothy is right,” chimed in Hazel crisply. “Miss Lamb made a principle out of her duty, real or supposed, to her uncle: she gave up her chance of married happiness because her sense of what was right would have been outraged if she had not.”
“Then she was a martyr!” exclaimed Jessie Wayne. “I shall see her as a picture in my mind next time we sing ‘The martyr first whose eagle eye.’ ”
“I dare say you will, goosey”—Dora Selwyn leaned forward past Dorothy to speak to Jessie, who sat at the end of the table—“meanwhile, you will please get on your feet, for the Head is rising.”
Jessie scrambled up in a great hurry, punting into Daisy Goatby, who sat on the other side of her. Daisy, heavy in all her movements, lurched against a plate standing too near the edge of the table, and brought it to the ground with a crash. But the crash was not heard, for Hazel, who saw it falling, and the gentlemen rising to leave the room at the same moment, swung up her hand for a rousing cheer, and in the burst of acclamation the noise of smashing was entirely lost.