“Takes sixteen hours, has her themes read in Mary’s class, and in her spare moments paints water colors that are exhibited in Boston,” said Betty promptly.
“Really?” gasped Helen.
“Really,” repeated Betty. “Of course she was very well prepared, and so her work here seems easy to her. Next year I hope that you and I won’t have to plod along so.”
Helen said nothing, but she was deeply grateful to Betty for that last sentence. “You and I”–as if there was something in common between them. The other girls set her apart in a class by herself and labeled her “dig.” If one was born slow and conscientious and plodding, was there any hope for one,–any place among these pretty girls who worked so easily and idled so gracefully? Helen shut her lips firmly and resolved to keep on hunting.
CHAPTER XI
MID-YEARS AND A DUST-PAN
Viewed in retrospect the tragic experiences of one’s freshman year seem often the most insignificant of trifles; but that does not prevent their being at the time momentous as the fate of empires. There are mid-year examinations, for instance; after one has survived them a few times she knows that being “flunked out” is not so common an experience as report represents it to be, and as for “low grades” and “conditions,” if one has “cut” or been too often unprepared she deserves and expects them, and if she has done her best and still finds an unwelcome note or two on the official bulletin board, why, she must remember that accidents will happen, and are generally quite endurable when viewed philosophically. But in freshman year one is inexperienced and easily the dupe of mischievous sophomores. Then how is one to prepare for the dreadful ordeal? The distinction is not at all clear between the intelligent review that the faculty recommend and the cramming that they abhor. There is a disconcerting little rhyme on this subject that has been handed down from generation to generation for so long that it has lost most of its form and comeliness; but the point is still sharp. It is about a girl who followed the faculty’s advice on the subject of cramming, took her exercise as usual, and went to bed each night at ten o’clock, as all good children should. The last stanza still rhymes, thus:
“And so she did not hurry,
Nor sit up late to cram,
Nor have the blues and worry,
But–she failed in her exam.”
Mary Brooks took pains that all her “young friends,” as she called them, should hear of this instructive little poem.
“I really thought,” said Betty on the first evening of the examination week, “when that hateful rumor was contradicted, that I should never be scared again, but I am.”