Biscuits turned to the last page, passing many an underlined word or phrase by the way, and read in crimson ink at the bottom: Mallock has done this better: you are getting very careless in your use of relatives. At which Biscuits smiled wisely and reassured herself of an announcement she had made in the middle of her junior year to the effect that even among the Faculty one ran across occasional evidences of real intelligence.
"Martha," she said abruptly, "I meant what I said about Mary and Alberta—they'd make a very good pair."
"And Miss Sutton and I—" returned Martha, sardonically.
"Precisely," said Biscuits, "Miss Sutton and you. Oh, I know nobody has the slightest right to ask it of you and we all supposed you wouldn't, but at the same time I thought I'd just lay it before you. I firmly believe, Martha, that you are the only person in this house capable of managing Martha Sutton!"
"I?" And Madame Chrysanthème dropped to the floor.
"Yes, you. Now, Martha, just look at it: you know that the girl is a perfect child—you know that she means well enough, and in her way she has a keen sense of humor. Now you are much more mature than the average girl up here and you take—er—broader views of things than most of them. You wouldn't be so shocked at the things Suttie does; you could, very gradually, you know, convey to her that her ideas of humor were just a little crude, you know, and that would strike her far more than the lectures that Alberta used to read her by the hour."
"Oh! Alberta!" Martha gasped. "Alberta was enough to drive anybody to drink!"
"Just so. Well, as I told Mrs. Harrow, you were the one, but of course no one had the least right to press it. And of course, in your last year, and all that, and naturally you haven't any special interest in her, and it's all right if you won't."
Martha scowled for a moment and appeared to be reviewing her own past life, rapidly and impartially.
"It would be a good thing to have her kept out of the halls, at least," she announced, at last, irrelevantly.