“It acts as a medium. Naturally, people apply to the Principal to recommend a capable person.”
“And she would recommend you?”
“Why not? She knows how much or how little I am good for. If she did not think I was up to the work, another would be put in.”
“I see.”
“But you don’t require us to write to the Principal?” said Harry, anxiously.
“You would be wiser if you did,” retorted Claudia. “But we do not require it, for we are all at liberty to make our own arrangements.”
“And yet remain a sort of society? I think it is very interesting,” said Emily. “I always maintain we don’t co-operate enough.”
“It depends upon what you co-operate for,” the girl answered coolly, for she thought Emily’s schemes, where they were not mischievous, inadequate, and was resolved to avoid being drawn into their meshes. For Anne she felt that universal attraction which a large power of sympathy creates, and, though she now and then winced under Philippa’s trenchant sentences, she enjoyed their humour and blunt directness; but for Emily’s best intentions she had no other word than—inadequate, which expressed a good deal of contempt.
As for Harry Hilton, she liked him cordially, but her offer of friendship was made perhaps more with a view to his benefit than her own pleasure. A man with so limited a horizon that he was content to live without a profession or hope of a career, was a man to be profoundly pitied, and stirred, if possible, to a nobler ambition. If she had realised that he seriously admired her, the idea would only have caused irritation, as that with which she might have regarded any tiresome person who wished to place an obstacle in her way. This impatient anger is not unusual with young girls for whom the world is just unfolding. They are eagerly expectant, time looks infinite, sentiment ridiculous, the lover comes before their hearts are ready, he is in their way, and they call him silly. They will accept him as a comrade, a companion; but the feeling which they are always credited with wishing to inspire is, in many a case, so irksome that they cannot forgive the man who offers it, and he never recovers the ground which that first repulsion lost.