“Oh, that will be all right,” responded Clarissa. “Besides, I have some examination papers—those of the past two or three years—and I am going to use them for your especial torment. It will strengthen your mind to answer the questions.”
“Thank you, but if my mind required strengthening I don’t believe that cramming would help. A cup of good strong coffee would be more to the point.”
“There,” cried Clarissa, “you’ve given yourself away. I have been wondering how you kept yourself awake until three A.M. as you boast of doing. If coffee does it I have only half as much respect for you as I thought I had. If I could look in upon you some midnight soon, and find you drinking strong coffee, with your head swathed in wet towels—for this I am told is the habit with coffee-bibbers—I’d punish you as you deserve.”
“I plead guilty,” cried Polly, “to the coffee drinking. Why not, since I have a little gas-stove of my own? But the wet towels, ugh! I could not stand anything so clammy. But come! time flies, and if you are in earnest about that symposium, let us hasten to my rooms.”
Many girls studied wholly by themselves. Pamela was one of these, and Lois another. Pamela in this, as in other things, was solitary from necessity rather than from choice. She had hardly a speaking acquaintance with most of the girls in her classes, and it occurred to none of them to ask her to join them. She for her part was too timid to make the first advances. Lois, on the other hand, would have been welcomed by many a little study group. But she was of a decidedly independent disposition, and she felt that she could accomplish more by herself, and with a smaller expenditure of time.
Her disinclination to be one of a crowd stood in the way of Lois’ popularity. Her fellow-students admitted that she was bright and amiable, and that she seldom said sarcastic things. But they felt that she was not deeply interested in them as individuals, and in consequence they were inclined to criticise her. It was harmless criticism, but it tended to increase the feeling that Lois was not exactly popular.
Julia and Ruth, studying together, rejoiced that they had the same electives. Ruth was unduly flurried and worried, and she and Julia sat up until midnight many nights when they might better have been in bed.
“The worst of it is,” sighed Ruth, after her last examination, “my cramming hasn’t helped me an atom. Not one of the four papers had a question that I could not have answered before I began to cram.”
“Yes, and if you hadn’t sat up so late grinding you would probably have been in a better state for work. You’ll take things more sensibly in your Sophomore and Junior years. Only Freshmen and Seniors work themselves into a fever. Freshmen are inexperienced and nervous, and Seniors never feel quite sure that they are going to pass in everything; but Sophomores and—”
“I can’t say that I agree with you, Miss Darcy,” said Jane Townall. “I’ve always tried to do my duty by all my instructors, but I never went into an examination, even in my Sophomore and Junior years, without an enormous amount of preparation. It seems to me that most girls do the same.”