"Fate was against me," said Eleanor shortly. "I wanted to see Miss
Raymond about a theme, but she's busy."
"Won't morning do?" asked Betty, sympathetically.
"Yes, I suppose so, only I wanted to have it off my hands."
"I don't wonder," agreed Betty. "She's none too agreeable about late themes."
"It's not a late theme. I want to get back the one I handed in to-day. It ought never to have gone in."
Betty stared at Eleanor for a moment in speechless amazement, then she danced across the room and pulling Eleanor after her, tumbled back among the couch cushions. "Oh, Eleanor, you are the funniest thing," she said. "Last year you didn't care about anything, and now I believe you're a worse fusser than Helen Chase Adams. The idea of worrying over a theme that is done and copied and in on time! Come and tell Madeline Ayres. She'll appreciate the joke, and she'll give us some of her lovely sweet chocolate that her cousins sent her from Paris."
But Eleanor hung back. "Please don't say anything about it to Miss Ayres. I'd really rather you didn't. It may be a joke to you, but it's a serious matter to me, Betty."
So more people than Eleanor were surprised the next afternoon to find that the clever story which Miss Raymond read with great gusto to her prize theme class, and commented upon as "extraordinary work for an undergraduate," should prove to be Eleanor Watson's.
As early in the morning as she dared Eleanor had gone over to get back her theme "that should never have gone in," and to ask permission to try again. But Miss Raymond had been up betimes, working over her new batch of papers, and she met Eleanor's apologies with amused approval of sophomores, who, contrary to the popular tradition about their cock- sureness, were inclined to underestimate their abilities, and imagine, like freshmen before midyears, that their work was below grade. So there was nothing for Eleanor to do but submit gracefully and leave the theme. It did not occur to her to caution Miss Raymond against reading it to her class.
In spite of hard struggles and little disappointments like Helen Adams's, it really takes very little to make a college reputation. One brilliant recitation may turn an unassuming student into a "prod."; and on the strength of one clever bit of writing another is given the title of "genius." This last distinction was at once bestowed on Eleanor. She was showered with congratulations and compliments. Her old school friends like Lilian Day and Jean Eastman hastened to declare that they had always known Eleanor Watson could write. Solid, dependable students like Dorothy King and Marion Lawrence regarded her with new respect; awed little freshmen pointed her out to one another as "that awfully pretty Miss Watson, who is a perfect star in themes, you know"; and her own class, who had cordially disliked her the year before, and not known what to think of her recent friendliness, immediately prepared to make a class heroine of her and lauded her performance to the skies.