“Oh,” responded Elizabeth carelessly, “it all depends on the kind of girls one knows. Your friends, of course, are more serious than mine. But you all make a mistake. You have lost five pounds, and you look as if you had lost your last friend, too.”
With this Elizabeth hurried off to join Polly Porson, for they both belonged to the same clique of rather lively girls just at this time beginning to promote theatricals, tableaux, and other frivolities, calculated to show that Radcliffe girls had other talents besides the purely scholastic.
“It’s easy for Miss Darcy to talk,” said Jane Townall, turning to Ruth, as Elizabeth moved away. “The loss of a grade would not hurt her; she is not going to teach, and it will be all the same to her whether she gets a plain degree, or a cum laude.”
“She does pretty well, though,” interposed a girl who had just joined the group. “She showed me her marks last year, and there was nothing, I think, below ‘B.’”
“Oh, there’s an art in getting marks, just as there is in achieving greatness of any other sort. Perhaps you are not aware, Freshmen,” and the speaker turned toward Ruth and Julia, “that one principle in selecting courses is to choose those demanding the least work, and at the same time yielding the highest marks. There’s a curious relation between the two. The easier the course and the smaller the amount of work in it, the higher the mark. Elizabeth goes in for such things as Semitic 12 and Fine Arts 1, and—oh, well, we know the list. They are studies that make for culture and high marks.”
“Also,” said another girl, “Elizabeth believes in making a good impression on her instructors. She will break into a lecture three times in the course of the hour to ask a question which sometimes has only the slightest connection with the subject. But often it gives the instructor an opportunity for a series of footnotes to the lecture in the shape of original remarks, and he ends by believing Elizabeth to be the most intelligent girl in his class. He keeps this in mind when her blue-book falls into his hand. This is one secret of her succeeding without working, for she says that she does not work, and you say that she gets good marks.”
“In other words, she ‘swipes’ marks,” interposed Clarissa.
Jane Townall looked uncomfortable at the tone of the discussion. Personalities were distasteful to her.
“Miss Darcy is very pleasant,” she ventured; “every one likes her. I envy a girl who has the faculty of making herself agreeable to every one.”
Jane meant to pay Elizabeth a very high compliment, but the two Juniors in the group laughed heartily.