There were various changes in the grouping of those girls who had been most together in their first two years.
Pamela alone, among those whom we have known the best, went on her way undisturbed. She had not been present at the little outbreak at the close of the operetta. In a general way she knew that there had been trouble, but she had asked no questions about it. In any case, she would have been sure that Julia was entirely right. Her summer, spent as before in tutoring, had helped greatly to free her from care. The scholarship, again awarded to her, the two Boston boys whom she was to tutor twice a week in Greek, had made her third year at Radcliffe a certainty. She continued to live at Miss Batson’s; and although her duties were lighter and she had a room to herself, the good boarding-house keeper declined the weekly payment that Pamela conscientiously offered.
“If you had a room twice as big as that little attic, and on the first floor front, it would just be a comfort to have you here, without your paying a cent. All my young ladies say they have just been getting culture ever since you came here, and that’s worth more than money to all of us.”
So Pamela felt herself to be almost rich, as she gathered her treasures about her in the little French-roofed chamber. Chief among them was a Tanagra figurine, a replica of the lady with the hat that Julia had insisted on her accepting the year before. On the shelf below were her Dante books, and near them some of her father’s Greek books, as well as those that she used in her own classes.
Under the great professor, who in this country stands for the study of Dante, she was reaching heights even more blissful than those reached through her study of Greek.
As to Clarissa, she and Polly each had a grievance, and each was bound to help the other right a wrong—or perhaps I should say, each meant to help right the other’s wrong. Polly kept her eye on Annabel, and Clarissa—well, Clarissa had a theory that in time she hoped to prove true.
There were many girls, unluckily, who looked on Clarissa with decided disfavor, believing her the author of the objectionable article; or at the best, they thought that she had unwisely let others use her note-book improperly. Two or three little coteries, therefore, some of them made up of very agreeable girls, were inclined to avoid Clarissa. So Polly, realizing this state of affairs, was all the more anxious to prove that her friend had been wronged. But how prove it?
One morning half a dozen girls clustered before the bulletin board. The assortment of notices touched every side of college life. One in which Polly Porson had had a large part read:
Freshmen and New Specials
are
Cordially invited by the Juniors to a reception, Wednesday, October 31, in the Auditorium, at 4.30 P.M.
Polly’s part had consisted of the dainty pen-and-ink drawing showing at the top a vivacious girl with arms extended, while at the side was a troop of smaller girls, presumably the Freshmen and Specials, with accompanying verses: