“Remember, Brenda,” cried Mrs. Barlow warningly, “that you are going this year only by special favor. You are a year younger than you ought to be on your first Class Day.”
“I know it, I know it, mamma, but I shall enjoy it just as well as if I were a year older. Besides, I shall go next year, too,” and Brenda pirouetted several times around the piazza.
Later in the evening, as Julia sat on the piazza looking out at sea, at the lamps revolving in the distant lighthouse and the moon rising from the water, her thoughts still lingered with Philip. The moon, at first a large crimson disk near the horizon, had been transformed into a smaller golden sphere nearer the zenith, and still Julia sat there wondering if Philip had left Cambridge, wondering if he would become a ranchman, wondering if he would think it worth while ever to come back for his degree.
Fay House, when Julia returned to it, had begun to take on its summer expression. The finals were over, and the entrance examinations had not begun. Very few girls were visible in the house, although there was a double set on the tennis ground and a group watching the game. But within there was an almost deathly stillness. The conversation room no longer re-echoed to undergraduate quips and jokes, and the little brass figures, appliquéed to the black wooden pillars of the mantle-piece as Polly had described them, gazed on deserted chairs. The magazines and periodicals were strewn untidily on the tables. Into this room Julia wandered this Monday afternoon. She fingered some of the magazines idly and then she turned toward the window. As she did so she gave a start, for there in a chair with her handkerchief over her face was a girl. Evidently she was asleep, for she did not stir as Julia drew near. The sight of the Vermont girl there—for it was Pamela—seemed to Julia like an echo of something that had happened. She remembered that it was in this very corner of this very room she had found Pamela looking so forlorn on the day of the first Idler reception. As she gazed at her now, Julia realized that in her absorption of the past few weeks, with a kind of unintentional selfishness, she had really hardly seen Pamela. Indeed, she had scarcely thought of her. Julia’s approach wakened Pamela, and as she pulled the handkerchief from her face, Julia noticed that she looked worn and thinner than usual.
“How cool you look!” Pamela exclaimed, as Julia took her hand. Pamela herself wore a stiffly starched shirt waist of rather clumsy cut, a high linen collar, and a heavy woollen skirt. Julia, in an écru muslin finished with a ruffle at the wrist and a soft ribbon at the neck, appeared in contrast the picture of comfort.
“What are you going to do this summer, Pamela?” asked Julia suddenly. She wondered if Pamela might not be worrying about the future. As the latter seemed to hesitate over her reply, she added, “Why couldn’t you come home with me to dinner, and then ride somewhere with me on the electric cars, to Newton, or to Arlington, if that would suit you better?”
“Oh, I wish that I could!” cried Pamela. “But you know I am busy still at Miss Batson’s. Couldn’t you call for me after tea?”
“Yes, indeed. Will seven o’clock be too early?”
“Oh, I can be ready then, easily.”
Julia was prompt at the appointed hour, and before Pamela could interpose she was warmly greeted by Miss Batson and introduced to three of the boarders who were seated on the steps.