"I've talked college ever since our junior year at the high school," she here reminded Selina.
She had. Juliette had a northern cousin in Ohio whose letters to her began to be dated from such an institution that same year. There were several college-graduate women in their own community, too, figures upon whom Juliette and the rest of them had gazed, awed. And about whom they mutually confessed to find, a certain carriage and a definite assurance, a look and manner more common to busy men, of those having business to attend to and the will and the ability to do it.
But who had dreamed that seeds so chance as these could have sown themselves in little Juliette's breast to become the dominant possession of that wee abode?
Little? Wee? Volatile? Crushable?
It was as if Juliette there on her ottoman vigorously using her pocket handkerchief to stay the still welling tears, thus read these oft-repeated and disqualifying diminutives applied to her in Selina's mind.
"All of you, in the family and out of it, always infuriate me by fixing the measure of my ability by the size of my body!" The crimson of her fury rushed to her cheeks afresh. "When I read my graduating essay as an honor girl, nobody gave me any credit for having got the honor, whereas everybody clapped and said how cute and that sort of thing."
It was so. It had seemed a joke, little Juliette with her crimson cheeks and her unfurled essay. "Judy, poor Judy," murmured Selina, aghast the more at these revelations from this friend she had thought she knew.
"You went to teaching," Juliette was continuing, "and that made me think on my part. Then you went South, getting about your business in life as you saw it, and at that I up and told Papa what I wanted. He treated it as a huge joke on my part, chucked me under the chin, I always have loathed his doing that at any time, and said for perpetrating it he'd give me a box at the minstrels and I could ask my friends. He actually did say that, Selina. And when I persisted that it wasn't a joke, that I'd made up my mind I wanted to go to college, and sooner or later was going, he was incredulous at first, and then flew into a rage and told me I was a little fool and there'd been enough of this nonsense, and if I said any more I could go to my room and stay there until I could be sensible. When I took it up the next time and insisted he owed it to me to show me why he felt as he did about a girl going to college, he said he'd show me the only argument he purposed advancing, and took me by my shoulder and marched me up here to my room, and going out slammed the door. I wrote him a note then and sent it to him at the store by mail, saying if he'd show me truly and convincingly, why, I'd give in. He didn't answer, but told Mamma to tell me if there was any more of it, he'd stop the allowance I'd asked for my last birthday."
"And all this by yourself, Judy?" from Selina, deploringly. "And I not here near you to help you, nor to comfort you!"
"I've never touched my allowance since," hotly, "and I don't mean to. That's why I didn't come to Adele's. I didn't have the dress to wear and I wouldn't ask for it. I haven't said another word to him on the subject of college since and I'm not going to. I just went around to Professor Maynard's boys' school and asked him if he'd take me and get me ready for college, and he said he would. I had some money saved up; you see, both my grandfathers always give us children money at Christmas and birthdays. This was while you were gone, Selina. Mamma and baby were away, staying for a couple of weeks at Grandma's on account of the whooping-cough next door to us, and it made it easier for me to manage."