Clarissa’s room was in a small, neat house in a neat side street. Her landlady had other boarders, but she took a real interest in them all.
Clarissa’s room looked on a little yard filled with pear trees, and the children of the neighborhood played constantly under her windows. This did not disturb her, for her nerves were not near the surface. Sometimes she called the children to her room and gave them a treat of fruit or sweet things. Mrs. Freeman’s other boarders thought Clarissa rather frivolous. One of them was a timid Freshman who studied unremittingly. Two of the others were graduate students, delving into zoölogy, and other “mussy sciences” (Clarissa’s phraseology), and the fifth was an inoffensive Sophomore. The two graduates roomed together. Clarissa had the best room in the house, but the Freshman had a small room under the eaves. The Freshman sometimes complained that she had made a mistake, and that she should have had a room in a lodging-house where she could have boarded herself with the aid of a chafing-dish and gas stove.
“And starve to death, with nobody nigh to hinder,” said Clarissa. “I’m glad that kind of thing is not encouraged at Radcliffe. But I wish that you had the room on my floor, instead of those zoölogists. Often about ten P.M. when I’ve finished studying I’d slip in and talk with you. Sometimes I knock on the zoölogical door, but if they let me in I feel like a criminal, for I can see that they are making a great effort to be polite, while they wish me a thousand miles away. They like to study well into the small hours, but as they pay for their own oil nobody can well object. I’m not half as entertaining to them as those squirmy things they keep in bottles. The only real gaiety in which they ever indulge is an ethical discussion with Pamela; just imagine the combination, ethics and zoölogy!”
The other girl laughed. “You might start a discussion at your party.”
“No, thank you, it’s to be a poster party, nothing more nor less improving than posters will be considered worthy of mention.”
Clarissa had yielded to Polly’s plans for the party, understanding the spirit in which it had been arranged. It had been talked of indefinitely before the affair of the newspaper; and although Polly did not now explain why she was so anxious to have her friend turn entertainer at this particular time, Clarissa understood, and Polly knew that she understood.
Nearly all who had been invited responded to Clarissa’s invitation, and one windy evening they gathered very contentedly around the open fire in her room. Clarissa’s room was as different as possible from Julia’s. To its rather homely furnishings she had added various things that had caught her fancy without regard to any scheme of art. There was a vivid Navajo blanket over her couch, and two Indian baskets from the Southwest on a bracket in a corner. Some Japanese fans were displayed over the mantle-piece, and just above them hung in a black frame a fine photograph of the Arch of Titus. But the other three walls, whether beautiful or ugly in the matter of their everyday decorations, for this evening were hidden by posters—posters large, small, ugly, beautiful, covered every spot.
“I know,” said Clarissa, in explanation, after welcoming her guests, “I know that posters have gone out of fashion. That is partly why I’ve taken them up. I had thought of offering prizes to the girl who could guess the artist of the largest number, but instead of that I’m going to explain them myself. Lo! here is a pointer that I brought over from Fay House this very afternoon.” So armed with the long wooden stick, Clarissa moved about the room, explaining much after the fashion of an auctioneer who has something to dispose of.
“Clarissa moved about the room, explaining”