Brenda's cousin at Radcliffe

by Helen Leah Reed

“Oh, I dare say that she’ll make just as good a housekeeper. A college-trained mind is really a very good possession for a minister’s wife.”

“Oh, Polly, Polly, you are incorrigible!” exclaimed Julia, returning at this moment, and handing Ruth a fire screen to shield her from the gaze of the others. Yet after all it was generally known that Ruth’s engagement would be announced on Class Day, and she and Will Hardon were situated so fortunately that the wedding, Julia knew, might take place within the year.

It is worth noting that almost all the party gave love of study as their chief reason for choosing college. They had turned their faces from the pleasantly idle life of the average American girl, and from seventeen to twenty-one had been hard workers. Every one of them had sacrificed something in order to achieve her end, and almost all of them intended that their education should benefit others. Although the majority of Julia’s guests—like the majority of the class—meant to be teachers, several were looking forward to other useful work. Even Annabel, in her secret soul, had an idea that she was to reduce the frothiness of the social set into which she should be thrown in Washington. Esther Haines was one of the few who proposed a definite career of altruism. She was to spend her first year after graduating in the College Settlement in the east side of New York. She said that after her year’s experience she would know whether or not it was wise to become the agent of some charitable organization. She had an idea that she might prefer the foreign field. Esther was one of the class whom Julia had come to know best in her Senior year. The latter often regretted that her acquaintance with Esther had come so late in her course, for Esther was not a pale, dyspeptic altruist, but one of the cheerful, rosy-cheeked kind, and it was easy to see that her mission to the poor would be one of joy and hopefulness.

Of the whole group Madge Burlap was the one, perhaps, who had had the hardest time in planning her course, for early in her Sophomore year her father had died, and at first it had seemed as if she must leave college. Instead of wealth, she now had nothing but a few hundred dollars in the bank and many books, pictures, and personal belongings. These things she gradually sold—so gradually that she did not draw on herself the pity of her classmates. It had been hard to part with that morocco-bound edition of Stevenson, at a time when her English instructor was urging them all to an intimacy with the great Scotchman. But after all, with the money in her pocket and the books on Julia’s shelves, she was not so very badly off; for in negotiating for the sale of the Stevenson, her pleasant acquaintance with Julia had deepened into friendship. It had been harder to part with her Ruskin, for this set had been divided, Polly taking “The Stones of Venice,” Annabel “The Seven Lamps of Architecture,” and one or two others taking the rest. Madge was a good business woman, and she disposed of all her superfluous belongings except her camera. Yet that could not be counted a superfluity, since she made it pay for itself many times over, and her artistic views of Cambridge and the surrounding country were beginning to be in demand at one or two well-known stationers.

“We know that you are a business woman and a photographer, and since you won’t tell us your exact aim, I prophesy that you will make a fortune, Madge, in artistic photography,” said Polly.

“Well, why not?” responded Madge, thinking of the three young brothers whom she was helping educate. “A fortune in our family would be both useful and ornamental.”

At last each girl of Julia’s party had read her confession, and the others had given their approval. Each in turn had promised Julia to record what she had written or said in the crimson-covered blank-book, as a beginning of the archives to which the exercises of Class Day and Commencement were bound to add so much. It was then that Annabel’s clear voice was again heard.

“You must not forget my confession, although it is not for the red book.”

“Oh, then, let’s hear it,” cried Madge Burlap, and the others echoed her wish. It happened that the group was now sitting in a semicircle around the fire. Annabel was in the centre, and as she spoke the others turned instinctively toward her. It suited her to be the centre of interest, and she began very dramatically:

“Of course every one here remembers the afternoon when I recited so many things before the curtain went up, that afternoon two years ago when we had to wait so long for the Idler play to begin.”