The suspense lasted through the whole week. Then, just two days before the vacation, Miss Mansfield reappeared and Eleanor asked timidly for an appointment.
“Come to-day at two,” began Miss Mansfield.
“Oh thank you! Thank you so much!” broke in Eleanor and stopped in confusion.
But Miss Mansfield only smiled absently. “Most of my belated freshmen don’t express such fervent gratitude for my firmness in pushing them through before the vacation. They try to put me off.” She had evidently quite forgotten the other appointment.
“I shall be so glad to have it over,” Eleanor murmured.
Miss Mansfield looked after her thoughtfully as she went down the hall. “Perhaps I’ve misjudged her,” she told herself. “When a girl is so pretty, it’s hard to take her seriously.”
She said as much to Ethel Hale when they walked home to lunch together, but Ethel was not at all enthusiastic over Miss Watson’s earnestness.
“She’s very late in working off a condition, I should say,” she observed coldly.
“Yes, but I’ve been away, you know,” explained Miss Mansfield. “Oh, Ethel, I wish you could meet him. You don’t half appreciate how happy I am.”
Ethel, who had decided after much consideration to let Eleanor’s affairs take their course, made a mental observation to the effect that an engagement induces shortness of memory and tenderness of heart. Then she said aloud that she also wished she might meet “him.”