Eleanor’s eyes flashed. “Once for all, Cara, please understand that’s not my way of doing business nowadays. I should like to go, though, and I imagine my father wouldn’t object. I’ll write you if I can arrange it.”
She had quite forgotten her idle promise when, on the following Monday morning, she stood in the registrar’s office, waiting to get a record card for chapel attendance in place of one she had lost. The registrar was busy. Eleanor waited while she discussed the pedagogical value of chemistry with a sophomore who had elected it, and now, after a semester and a half of gradually deteriorating work, wished to drop it because the smells made her ill.
“Does the fact that we sent you a warning last week make the smells more unendurable?” asked the registrar suggestively, and the sophomore retreated in blushing confusion.
Next in line was a nervous little girl who inquired breathlessly if she might go home right away–four days early. Some friends who were traveling south in their private car had telegraphed her to meet them in Albany and go with them to her home in Charleston.
“My dear, I’m sorry,” began the registrar sympathetically, “but I can’t let you go. We’re going to be very strict about this vacation. A great many girls went home early at Christmas, and it’s no exaggeration to say that a quarter of the college came back late on various trivial excuses. This time we’re not going to have that sort of thing. The girls who come back at all must come on time; the only valid excuse at either end of the vacation will be serious illness. I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” said the little girl, with a pathetic quiver in her voice. “I never rode in a private car. But–it’s no matter. Thank you, Miss Stuart.”
Eleanor had listened to the conversation with a curl of her lip for the stupid child who proffered her request in so unconvincing a manner, and an angry resentment against the authorities who should presume to dictate times and seasons. “They ought to have a system of cuts,” she thought. “That’s the only fair way. Then you can take them when you please, and if you cut over you know it and you do it at your peril. Here everything is in the air; you are never sure where you stand—”
“What can I do for you, Miss Watson?” asked the registrar pleasantly.
Eleanor got her chapel card and hurried home to telegraph her father for permission to go to Bermuda, and, as she knew exactly what his answer would be, to write Caroline that she might expect her. “You know I always take a dare,” she wrote. “My cuts last semester amounted to twice as much as this trip will use up, and if they make a fuss I shall just call their attention to what they let pass last time. Please buy me a steamer-rug, a blue and green plaid one, and meet me at the Forty-second Street station at two on Friday.”
Betty knew nothing about Eleanor’s plans, beyond what she had been able to gather from chance remarks of the other girls; and that was not much, for every time the subject came up she hastened to change it, lest some one should discover that Eleanor had told her nothing, and had scarcely spoken to her indeed for weeks. When Eleanor finally went off, without a sign or a word of good-bye, Betty discovered that she was dreadfully disappointed. She had never thought of the estrangement between them as anything but a temporary affair, that would blow over when Eleanor’s mortification over the debate was forgotten. She had felt sure that long before the term ended there would come a chance for a reconciliation, and she had meant to take the chance at any sacrifice of her pride. She was still fond of Eleanor in spite of everything, and she was sorry for her too, for her quick eyes detected signs of growing unhappiness under Eleanor’s ready smiles. Besides, she hated “schoolgirl fusses.” She wanted to be on good terms with every girl in 19–. She wanted to come back to a spring term unclouded by the necessity for any of the evasions and subterfuges that concealment of the quarrel with Eleanor and Jean Eastman’s strange behavior had brought upon her. And now Eleanor was gone; the last chance until after vacation had slipped through her fingers.