“While I appreciate your interest in your daughter’s college work and also in her health, permit me to say that I think you over-estimate the nervous strain imposed by the necessity for producing a brief written exercise. Your daughter’s work is so brilliant and likewise so spontaneous that I feel sure you need not be anxious about her. I regret her recent absence from the class on my own account as well as on hers. I remain, madam,
“Most respectfully,
“John Elliot Eaton.”
“Now,” said Madeline, “how is that for subtle flattery and sugar-coated sarcasm? ‘Madam, you are a goose, but you have a clever daughter,’—that’s what he virtually says. How I detest that man!”
“You’re too hard on him, Madeline,” laughed Rachel. “Consider what he says about your work.”
“Georgia’s, you mean,” corrected Madeline. “He never puts good comments on my own themes. He is like all the rest of the faculty; once get him interested, as Georgia did with her Matthew Arnold theories, and you are safe from conditions forever after.”
“What does he mean about her ‘recent absence’?” asked Helen.
“Exactly what I want to know,” said Madeline. “Haven’t you girls been handing in her ten-minute tests?”
“Of course we haven’t,” said Betty. “That is your ‘touch.’ You began it, and we couldn’t keep it up even if we wanted to. We can’t any of us write one decent theme in ten minutes, to say nothing to doing two.”
“Well, then,” began Madeline grudgingly, “I suppose I must attend to Georgia’s written work. But I consider that it’s putting a great deal off on me.”