“Well, that’s over!” sighed Laura and escaped before any one had put the motion to adjourn. Janet vanished behind her, and Jo picked up the manuscript of which she was champion.
“By the way, girls,” she said, “I will return this to its writer, if you don’t mind. And I shall tell her to offer it to the Annual. The committee will jump at the chance. Find out who she is, please.”
I slipped the elastic band from the packet of fifteen sealed envelopes and selected the one marked with the title of the story. The name inside was that of a sophomore who had already contributed several articles to the Monthly. Then I opened the envelope belonging to number seven.
“Maria Mitchell Kiewit,” I read, “who in the world is she? I’ve never heard of her. She must be a freshman.”
Jo who was half way out of the room stopped at the word and thrust her head back around the door. “Did little Maria Kiewit write that? No wonder it is simple and jerky. She’s a mathematical prodigy, she is. Her mother is an alumna of this college. See! The infant was named after our great professor of astronomy. She wants to specialize herself in mathematical astronomy when she gets to be a junior. Her mother was head editor of the Monthly in her day. Maria rooms somewhere in this corridor, I believe. It will be a big thing for her to win the prize away from all the upper class girls. I didn’t vote for her. By-bye.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Adele, clasping her hands in that intense way of hers, “won’t she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her mother will be delighted. Her mother will be proud.”
“Hist!” Jo’s head reappeared. “She’s coming down the corridor now. Red cheeks, bright eyes, ordinary nose, round chin, long braid, white shirtwaist, tan skirt—nothing but an average freshman. She doesn’t look like a mathematical prodigy, but she is one. And an author, too—dear, dear! There must be some mistake. Authors never have curly hair.”
Adele and I poked our faces through the crack. Jo wickedly flung the door wide open. “Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering heroine comes,” she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the buttons on her waist.
Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous admiration. “O Maria Mitchell Kiewit,” she declaimed, “hearken! I have the honor—me, myself—I snatch it, seize it—the honor to announce that thou—thee—you—your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!” She scrambled upright by means of clutching my skirt and put out a cordial hand. “Nice girl! Shake!”
“Josephine!” gasped Adele in horrified rebuke. My breath was beginning to come fast over this insult to our editorial dignity when I caught sight of the freshman’s face. Her cheeks were as red as ever, but she had turned white about the lips, and her eyes were really terrified.