“Oh yes, I know the Lamb Bursary is a prize worth having,” said Dorothy. “Tom has talked about it, and groaned a lot because there was not an equal gift for the boys. But I don’t suppose I should have much chance for it as I am not at all clever.”
“Oh, that does not matter so much if you are anything of a sticker at work,” said Hazel; “the Lamb Bursary goes to the best all-round scholar of the year. You might be very brilliant in some subjects, but if you were a duffer at others you would not stand a chance. For instance, you might stand very high in mathematics, you might be a prodigy in chemistry, but if you had not decent marks for languages, history, and music you would be left, for the judging is on the averages of all the subjects. It is really a very good way, as it gives quite an ordinary girl a chance.”
“What do you mean by judging on the averages?” asked Dorothy, frowning more than before.
“This way,” put in Margaret, whose business in life seemed to be to supplement Hazel. “You might get a hundred marks for maths; well, eighty would be a good average, so you would be put down for eighty. Say you only got twenty for history; the twenty left over from your maths average would be put to it, but it would not bring you up to your average of eighty, don’t you see? It is a queer way of judging, and must give the staff and the examiners no end of trouble, but it does work out well for the girl who is plodding but not especially clever. In most subjects one could hope to make eighty out of a hundred, but oh! it means swotting all the time. One can’t shirk a subject that does not make much appeal, because every set of marks must be up to the average.”
“I don’t mind work,” said Dorothy, her frown disappearing, “but I’m not brilliant anywhere, and that has been the trouble. The Bursary sends you to Cambridge, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, the full university course. Oh! it is well worth trying for, even if one has little or no chance of getting it.” Margaret’s face glowed as she spoke, and Dorothy thought she was really nice-looking when she was animated.
“Webster and Poole are wedged into a corner along there; I am going to talk to them,” said Tom, thrusting his head in from the corridor; and then he went off, and Dorothy did not see him again until the train slowed up at Claydon Junction, where they had to change for Sowergate.
Quite a crowd of boys and girls poured out of the London train, racing up the steps and over the bridge to the other platform where the little Sowergate train was waiting. Dorothy went over with Margaret, while Hazel and Tom stayed behind to sort out the luggage. There was a wait of ten minutes or so. The carriage was crowded out with girls, some of them new, like Dorothy, and others, old stagers, who swaggered a little by way of showing off. The talk was a queer jumble of what they had been doing in vac, of the hockey chances of the coming term, and what sort of programme they would have for social evenings. Dorothy sat silent now; indeed she was feeling rather lonely and out of it, for every one was appealing to Margaret, and Hazel was at the other end of the carriage, while Tom was nowhere to be seen.
“Rhoda Fleming has come back,” said a stout girl who had flaming red hair, “I saw her at Victoria. She says she is going to stay another year, so that she can have a chance at the Mutton Bone.”
“She will never win it,” chorused several.