“Oh, I’m just as wise as I was before. It looks like some kind of a heathen idol, and you gaze at it as if you adored it.”
“Come, Miss Herter,” said Julia, hastening to the relief of Pamela. “Even Freshmen in Cambridge are expected to know something about Greek Art. You’d better get a catalogue of the Boston Art Museum, and the next time you go there you can study the Tanagra figures.”
“Well,” replied Clarissa, “I’ll take your advice. But now I must be off. ‘Answers to Correspondents’ always declare that it’s rude to outstay an earlier caller, but Mrs. Blair and your cousin so fascinated me that I forgot my manners.”
So Clarissa and her friends went away, but Pamela, at Julia’s request, stayed a little longer. Two or three other pleasant Radcliffe girls dropped in, and she enjoyed their bright, informal conversation. She found afterwards that to meet any one at Miss Bourne’s was sure to open a pleasanter acquaintance than any casual introduction.
The memory of this Monday afternoon cheered her as she set the table that evening, and waited on Miss Batson, and washed the dishes. Fate, indeed, had been particularly kind to her, for Miss Batson, who was apt to be absent-minded, had herself bought sugar that afternoon, forgetting entirely that she had asked Pamela to get it.
X
DISCUSSIONS AND DISCUSSIONS
The Easter vacation had come and passed, and Pamela was pleased to find herself again attending lectures. She had been a little lonely, for almost all of her classmates had been away somewhere “for fun or for clothes,” as Polly Porson put it. Polly and Clarissa had gone together to New York, where the former had an aunt, and their talk now turned on Art exhibitions, Waldorf musicales, and things of that kind. Julia, yielding to her aunt’s entreaties, had fixed her mind more or less attentively on clothes. Lois had had to put her own time and strength into remodelling and shaping the lighter summer clothes. Whereas in Julia’s case her greatest sacrifice of time came in the unescapable “fittings” which she had to undergo at the dressmaker’s. Pamela had had neither fun nor new clothes to console her in the vacation. She had been unable to afford the trip to Vermont, and indeed she did not intend to return home for the summer holidays, unless she should fail to find some employment in vacation that would help her pay her expenses during the next college year. Her one luxury through the recess had been frequent trips to Boston. She had wandered to her heart’s content through the Art shops, and she had spent many hours in the Art Museum. She had saved car-fare by walking one way to Boston, and this exercise in itself had probably been an advantage to her, as in winter she had had little time for long walks. The fresh spring air as she walked along blew many cobwebs from her brain. For Pamela was not of a hopeful temperament, and she could not help wondering where she should get her income for the coming year. Her aunt’s letters were not altogether cheerful. Between the lines she could read that continued disapproval of her ambition for a college degree. “If you had gone to the Normal School,” read one of the letters, “you’d be almost ready now to take a school. Perhaps you might have had a chance at the Academy. They say that Miss Smith is going to be married.”
“They’ll feel better if I tell them that I’m likely to get a scholarship at the end of another year. Oh, I do hope that I shall take second-year honors! That will make the scholarship almost certain. If I could earn fifty dollars above my expenses this summer, and if Miss Batson will give me the same chance next year, why, I can certainly hold on until I get a scholarship. Ah, me!”
The sigh was perhaps not to be wondered at, for Pamela saw clearly the uphill road that lay before her. Sometimes she could not help contrasting herself with Julia and Clarissa, and the others before whom life seemed to spread out so delightfully. She listened with interest to all that these lighter-hearted girls had to tell of their vacation experiences, and she bent with redoubled energy to her work. May was at hand, and nobody can be utterly down-hearted in May, with the trees bursting into bloom, and the air growing softer and sweeter, and the bright spring sun touching everything with gold, making even literary Cambridge a pleasant place for the hundreds of students who cross the Yard to the halls of Harvard, or walk through Garden Street to Fay House. Yet despite spring sunshine, Pamela shrank into herself, and even Julia could not drag her out of her routine.
“It isn’t right,” Clarissa remonstrated, “to think so much of Xenophon, Plato, and Euripides. They may have been very able men, but to think of them alone will make you one-sided.”