“There she goes again on her Literary Career,” cut in Mary scornfully. “Come home with me for dinner, Babbie, and make plans for the great campaign. I almost promised George to go and call on his new assistant this evening, but I, for one, am capable of unselfish renunciation. And the moral of that,”—Mary fastened her furs and linked arms with the submissive Babbie,—“is: when the new assistant is a frump, George really shouldn’t ask me to call on her. Good-bye, Betty. If you think best, you might relieve Prexy’s mind about his over-conditioned freshman. Not knowing us as well as you do, he may be getting quite desperate.”
The thought of mid-year week had been a nightmare to Montana Marie. Studying every minute, sitting up half the night, worrying, hurrying, spending your time on the questions you weren’t asked and forgetting the answers to the ones you were—that, in brief, had been her notion of the fatal occasion. But a few days before the ordeal she began to get some new ideas. Betty called her into her cozy room at the Morton to say encouraging things about the effort she was making and to advise her not to overwork. Pretty Babbie Hildreth came to call, said more flattering things about Marie’s valuable opinions of bridesmaids’ dresses, and hoped, very casually, that she wasn’t planning to cram; it was just a silly freshman trick, and always did more harm than good. Madeline Ayres dragged Marie off to a matinée at the Junction. Helen Adams took her for a walk at the hour appointed for an English lesson.
“And we talked all the way about men,” Marie told Connie afterward. “Imagine Miss Adams getting on to that subject! She knows quite a lot about it, too. I suppose she takes her ideas out of Shakespeare and Thackeray and Scott and the rest of the classics. I’ve found some of them right here in ‘Much Ado about Nothing.’ I never thought of finding useful ideas in Shakespeare on a real practical subject like men.”
When mid-year week was actually upon her, Montana Marie had no time to grow nervous, or frightened or discouraged, or to overwork. The B. C. A.’s left her mornings and early afternoons undisturbed, save for friendly offers of help from the tutors. But about four there was always some fun afoot. A walk, a skating or snow-shoeing party, a sleigh-ride in Mary’s trim cutter,—then a merry dinner at the Tally-ho or the Belden, and after that you were much too sleepy to sit up and study. So Connie and the new coffee-maker retired behind a screen, and Montana Marie slept the dreamless sleep of those who have had their fill of fresh air.
The first examination she pronounced “pretty fierce.” The next “wasn’t bad.” English, she declared, she really enjoyed.
“And what do you think,” she told Connie in great excitement, “I got in Shakespeare’s ideas about men. I chose it for my theme subject. I may not know much about Shakespeare, but I know a lot about men. I shouldn’t be surprised if that theme made a hit.”
It did. The freshman English teacher showed it to Miss Raymond, and Miss Raymond read it to a senior theme-class as an example of the value of having something to say before you tried to say it.
And so Montana Marie O’Toole passed through the ordeal of mid-years unscathed save for a low-grade or two.
“And what is a low-grade or two?” inquired Babbie scornfully. “Even prods get those.”
“I’ve learned a lot this last week,” Montana Marie informed Betty gratefully. “I’ve learned to do an outer edge on the ice, and to skee—if it isn’t too much of a hill. And I’ve learned what it means to really concentrate your mind. I thought before that it meant to work all the time, just as hard as you can. But it doesn’t. It means to work like anything till you’re tired, and then play like anything till you’re rested. Now that’s my style. Me for concentration. Concentration for mine,” ended Montana Marie, whose smile had recently got back all its former brilliant radiance.