Miss Ferris was in, and she and her darkened, flower-scented room wore an air of coolness and settled repose that was a poignant relief after the glaring sunshine outside and the confusion of “last days.”
“So you go to-morrow,” said Miss Ferris pleasantly. “I don’t get off till next week, of course. Are you satisfied?”
“Satisfied?” repeated Betty. She had heard of Miss Ferris’s habit of flashing irrelevant questions at her puzzled auditors, but this was her first experience of it.
“With your first year at Harding,” explained Miss Ferris.
“Oh!” said Betty, relieved that it was no worse. “Why, y-es–no, I’m not. I’ve had a splendid time, but I haven’t accomplished half that I ought. Next year I’m going to work harder from the very beginning, and—” Betty stopped abruptly, realizing that all this could not possibly interest Miss Ferris.
“And what?”
“I didn’t want to bore you,” apologized Betty. “Why, I’m going to try to–I don’t know how to say it–try not scatter my thoughts so. Nan says that I am so awfully interested in every one’s else business that I haven’t any business of my own.”
“I see,” said Miss Ferris musingly. “That’s quite a possible point of view. Still, I’m inclined to think that on the whole we have just as much orange left and it tastes far better, if we give a good deal of it away. If we try to hang on to it all, it’s likely to spoil in the pantry before we get around to squeeze it dry.”
Betty looked puzzled again.
“You don’t like figures of speech, do you?” said Miss Ferris. “You must learn to like them next year. What I mean is that it seems to me far better in the long run to be interested in too many people than not to be interested in people enough. Of course, though, we mustn’t neglect to be sufficiently interested in ourselves; and how to divide ourselves fairly between ourselves and the rest of the world is the hardest question we ever have to answer. You’ll be getting new ideas about it all through your course–and all through your life.”