“That’s just it,” said the taller of the two. “Elizabeth does try to make herself agreeable to every one. She would rather be called uneducated than unpopular. I shouldn’t wonder,” she concluded with a smile, “if she had designs on the Idler. But then, she’d make a fairly good President.”
“Oh, but what a change after Miss Witherspoon! Besides, I’d rather see a girl like Lois Forsaith.”
“Oh, well, of course. By the time she is a Senior her turn may come, but at present it’s out of the question. Indeed, I doubt that she’d ever be elected, however strongly some of us might wish it. She’s too independent; and though she doesn’t make enemies, she wouldn’t have enough people to work for her at an election. She hasn’t many intimate friends. You’ve got to belong to a clique if you want to hold office, or else be tremendously and surpassingly beautiful or rich.”
“Well, Lois isn’t that exactly. She’s just a good all-round kind of girl with considerable talent, and she’s so independent that nobody ever quite appreciates her.”
“Well, I’m sure,” said Jane Townall primly, as the group broke up, “I feel as if in some way I had done Miss Darcy an injury. I really did not mean to make her a subject of discussion when I spoke of the ease with which she takes her examinations. I hope that I didn’t do her any injustice. I’m sure that I didn’t mean to.”
“Of course you didn’t, Jane; you wouldn’t hurt a fly, we all know that,” exclaimed one of the Juniors with a surprising flippancy. Jane was Julia’s Senior adviser, and her four months at Radcliffe hadn’t lessened her awe of Seniors in general, and of Jane in particular. For although Jane was awkward—unused to conventional society—and wrapped up in her studies, she had more than once gone out of her way to help Julia; and while she was timid about offering advice, when asked to give it she was always logical and painstaking in what she said.
IX
TWO CATASTROPHES
One Monday soon after the mid-years Julia and Elizabeth were walking down Garden Street in the face of a rather sharp wind. Elizabeth, like all who are not Boston bred, complained of the spring winds as if they were more vicious than in her native New Jersey. Passing the old graveyard, she laughingly reminded Julia that Longfellow’s “dust is in her beautiful eyes,” applied to one who lay buried within the First Parish enclosure, and that some wit had commented that dust was always in some one’s eyes in Cambridge.
“Yet it’s an interesting old graveyard,” said Julia, “and sometime I hope to go inside and study some of the inscriptions.”
“We all mean to do those things,” responded Elizabeth, “when we are Freshmen. I did myself last year. Christ Church is almost next door to Fay House, and it’s one of the many that Washington honored. But I doubt if you go within it before your Senior year, unless you make it your regular church. But, dear me! What is that?”