Examination day came, and Ruth bent her determined steps to the City Hall. The apartment designated was already crowded with waiting applicants, who regarded, with jealous eye, each addition to their number as so much dimunition of their own individual chance for success.
Ruth’s cheeks grew hot, as their scrutinizing and unfriendly glances were bent on her, and that feeling of utter desolation came over her, which was always so overwhelming whenever she presented herself as a suppliant for public favor. In truth, it was but a poor preparation for the inquisitorial torture before her.
The applicants were called out, one by one, in alphabetical order; Ruth inwardly blessing the early nativity of the letter H, for these anticipatory-shower-bath meditations were worse to her than the shock of a volley of chilling interrogations.
“Letter H.”
Ruth rose with a flutter at her heart, and entered a huge, barren-looking room, at the further end of which sat, in august state, the dread committee. Very respectable were the gentlemen of whom that committee was composed; respectable was written all over them, from the crowns of their scholastic heads to the very tips of their polished boots; and correct and methodical as a revised dictionary they sat, with folded hands and spectacle-bestridden noses.
Ruth seated herself in the victim’s chair, before this august body, facing a flood of light from a large bay-window, that nearly extinguished her eyes.
“What is your age?” asked the elder of the inquisitors.
Scratch went the extorted secret on the nib of the reporter’s pen!
“Where was you educated?”