“This is what I mean,” Mademoiselle went on, lifting her shoulders ever so little and giving her head a sprightly toss which Jacquette instantly recognised as her own. “I’m a bright little girl! I’m a clever little girl! It isn’t necessary for me to spend time on my lessons. Oh, no, I never look up the references! I don’t bother with the grammar! My translation is so good that it brings up my marks even if I do fail on those stupid old rules. I’m such a lucky little girl! I’ll get through.
“That’s pinning one’s clothing together to keep it from falling off. Wait, dearie, I haven’t done. Won’t you try, now that you have more time, to form the habit of sewing the buttons on your lessons?”
No one could resist Mademoiselle when the pleading tone came into her voice, and, from that moment, Jacquette’s inactive membership became endurable. She had begun to sew on the buttons; and gradually, as the weeks went on, she won back the old Brookdale sense of satisfaction in making each lesson a finished piece of work—a feeling which she had learned to regard as childish during her freshman year at Marston.
“Tia, what makes you look so young?” she demanded, one evening, as she and Aunt Sula finished playing a duet which ended in a series of martial chords. “Is it just that rose-coloured waist? You don’t know what a dear little brown ringlet there is, trickling down in front of this ear.”
“Trickling ringlet! Your English teacher would call that a vicious misuse of the verb,” Aunt Sula laughed as she tucked the ringlet into place. “Perhaps I look different because I’m so happy over your finding time for the music again. I feel as if somebody had given me back my Brookdale girl.”
“Brookdale,” Jacquette repeated, with an odd little smile, as she hunted through a pile of music. “That makes me think of Margaret Howland. She asked me right out, this morning, why I wasn’t going to spreads and things; so I had to tell her in confidence, that I was inactive for this year. Guess what she said.”
“‘Oh, how I do envy you!’” Aunt Sula hazarded, roguishly.
“No, sir! She said for goodness’ sake not to let her mother hear of it, or she’d surely be made to do the same thing.”
“Oh! Mrs. Howland has her troubles, then.”
“Troubles! If you think Sigma Pi makes troubles, you ought to have a little experience with the Kappa Delts. They’ve been just over-reaching themselves in their rushing this fall. It’s spreads every other minute, and matinees and automobile rides and bunches of violets for their pledges, and everything else you can think of. The worst of it, for Margaret, is that she’s the kind of girl that tries to keep up her studies besides, you know, and I can’t help seeing, myself, that she’s just worn out.”