“He’s gone to the ‘never been’ shore,” added Isabel.
“That masculine hand,”
“Of Miss Ora Rand,” suggested Cathalina.
“Shall fool us poor Psyches no more,” finished Lilian. “Tell us about her, Eloise.”
“I did not want to write to her in the first place, because I am so busy, you know, that I can hardly keep up writing to two or three close friends whom I don’t want to give up. She is younger than I am, does not go around with us older girls and boys at home, and, I think, just wanted to keep up a correspondence because I was away at school and she thought it would be interesting. So it has been a little drag, that is all. But she is a good little thing, and I have answered her letters once in awhile. I am ashamed to be so mean, but you just can’t spend so much time on letters. And that is ‘Reginald’!”
“Now defunct,” said Pauline. “Requiescat in pace.”
School life is a busy, exciting one, full of hard work for those who want success in it, but also full of fun and good times among the especially interesting folks that compose the school world. It is full of variety, and time flies swiftly on that account. Before the girls realized it, spring was again at hand. It was April, with its tantalizing days, in which the birds were migrating, nature was making a great effort to bloom into blossoms of tree and plant, the girls were hungering for the woods and shore, and yet in this more northern clime there were wet, muddy fields, chill winds, and occasional flurries of snow. The bird classes wore rubber boots, raincoats, and rubber hats or other more disreputable head covering which rain could not hurt. It was April of 1917, that spring when the echoes of heavy artillery in France were of more and more concern in our country.
One morning the newspapers were delivered earlier than usual. The delivery was usually made about the middle of the forenoon. This morning, as Isabel said later, “even Greycliff Village had speeded up,” and the papers came out right after breakfast. In them was the never-to-be-forgotten message of the President. The teachers sat reading their papers at their desks when the first bell for class rang, and a few of the girls who took them came to class with copies in their hands. Faces were sober and some of them were beginning to take on that look of uplift which was characteristic of the time. Patricia West’s class had gathered and were waiting when she put down her paper upon her desk, looked through and beyond the girls gathered before her, and stepped to the blackboard behind her. No outline of Latin constructions, or references for English study grew under her hands. The girls watched her while she wrote:
“In the beauty of the lilies, Christ was born beyond the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;