“Oh, no, work always agrees with me.”
“Then something is troubling you,” persisted Miss Ambrose firmly. “I fear that you were less successful than you would have been had you not taken care of me the night when I sprained my foot. I know that you were to have an examination the next day.”
“Oh, no,” and Lois smiled like her usual self. “Oh, no, I came out better than I expected in that. I had an ‘A.’”
“Then I am really puzzled,” said Miss Ambrose, adding, with a slight touch of severity, “I should think that you might trust me sufficiently to tell me what the trouble really is.”
Now even a fortnight earlier, Lois would hardly have believed any one who had told her that after a brief acquaintance she could have found it possible to open her heart to one whom she had known so short a time. Yet although she confided comparatively little, Miss Ambrose, reading between the lines, saw that the young girl was making a great sacrifice in stopping her course at this stage. “Sacrifice” is not perhaps exactly the right term, for on the part of Lois it was involuntary. Until she could earn money, it was not possible for her to continue her course. Yet when Lois had told Miss Ambrose all her reasons for leaving, the older woman merely expressed the conventional words of regret. Her eyes held rather more than their usual look of absent-mindedness.
Great, therefore, was the surprise of Lois, on reaching home on that Saturday evening after she had been with Julia, to find a letter awaiting her from Miss Ambrose. From between the pages a thin blue slip fluttered to the floor.
“You must accept this,” wrote Miss Ambrose in her fine, pointed handwriting, “as a very slight tribute of my indebtedness to you. I do not refer merely to the sacrifice you made in staying with me the evening when I was hurt; but you have done me a great favor in bringing me in touch with the woman’s college. You have given me an insight into the life of a college girl. I know that you will continue to keep me informed about it, and thus I shall enjoy through another a little of what I so longed for in my youth. From this time I intend to contribute a certain amount toward the education of one or two students, and I am sure that you will oblige me by being the first to give me the privilege of doing something for the honor of good scholarship.”
Picking up the blue slip, Lois saw that it was a check for one hundred and fifty dollars. The amount took her breath away. It meant not only the payment of her tuition for the next half-year, but it gave her a margin for other things, something even to save toward the expenses of the next year, for Lois was a good manager, and her pulses beat to fever heat as she thought of all that she could do with this money.
She found that her parents made no objection to her keeping the check, and she had no hesitation in breaking her engagement with the Village School, as she knew that another approved candidate for the position had been sadly disappointed when it was given to her.
Lois felt that she had done nothing to deserve this good fortune, and yet she was too sensible to decline what came in her way. She realized that her own greatest usefulness in the world would come from finishing her college course, and she lost no time in thanking Miss Ambrose, and in assuring her that she would do her best to deserve her confidence. Then Miss Ambrose smiled a contented smile. At last she had a direct interest in the woman’s college.