chanted the infant classes in full choir over their first table.
One and one certainly made two; and two were heavier to carry than one. Fâtma clutched her burden tighter and toiled up the steps once more, leaving the clamour behind her.
"Ari! Is that babe hungry again?" queried a tall girl, flashing past the next landing, plumaged like a parrot in red and green. "Babies seem hungry things. I'm glad I haven't one as yet." She was a bride, kept from her husband's house in order to enjoy a scholarship.
Fâtma, out of breath, said nothing, but leaned against a pillared shaft. The baby, having seized on her inky thumb, was sucking at it contentedly, for India ink is sweet and sticky.
"Fifteenth page, second paragraph. Among the lower animals the maternal instinct falls little short of that displayed by the human race. Even in the family of Aves the female, during the period of incubation--"
Fâtma's foot was on the ladder again, for the babe, having sucked the ink from her thumb, demanded something more satisfying.
Oh, how quiet it was up here in the long, matted corridor! One seemed to have left the stress of life behind. Through the doorways leading into darker rooms you could see groups of girls and women squatted on the floor over their low desks. Here busy over pen and ink, here murmuring from books. More circled round the terrestrial globe. An odd company: some wrinkled and old, with shaven head and white shroud; others dressed in the same fashion, but fair and fresh. Hindu widows these, seeking solace for death in life endured or yet to come. A young Sikh wife or two ablaze--ears, nose, and forehead--with jingling gold set thick with jewels. And here, sharper than any, with finger pointing to the pole, a small Bengali girl, who had been married these seven years gone, and looked a perfect child.
All this interested Fâtma not at all. She had seen it too often. Her goal lay in the end room among the second-year students, who sat on benches.
"Find the value of B in the following equation: A square plus X squared equal AX plus B," read out the teacher from her desk as Fâtma entered. Whereat she promptly added in English, "Bother that baby!"
It must be remembered that the B, representing baby, does not enter into equations at Girton or Somerville.