At her escape into the corridor Berta paused for a moment in the shadow of the staircase to brush the excitement from her glowing face. She winked rapidly once or twice in hopes of smothering the sparkle in her eyes, but succeeded only in nicking a happy tear drop from her lashes. Then she smoothed the dimple from her cheek and tried to straighten her lips into the sober dignity proper for a senior who was on the honor list and had just come from an interview with the critic of her commencement essay.
Her efforts were all in vain, however, for at the very minute that the dimple came dancing out again and the rebellious mouth quivered back into its joyous curves, somebody with a swift tap-tap-tap of light heels flew down the stairs in a rustle and a flutter and darted toward Berta.
“They’ve come! They’re here! The Board of Editors is going to meet in the lecture room immediately to open the boxes. Four big beautiful boxes full of splendid great books all in green with gilt lettering. Hurry! Hurry quick yourself! You’re head literary editor. It’s really your book—the ideas, editorials, verses, farce, everything! The sale opens at five. Everybody’s crazy to see the new senior Annual. Our Annual! Oh, Berta!” She seized the taller girl around the waist and whirled her down the hall till loose sheets of paper from her dangling note-book flitted merrily hither and yon.
“Bea, take care! You’re crumpling my essay.”
“Your essay? Oh, that’s so! Senior president, Annual editor, honor girl, commencement speaker, graduate fellow-heigho! She ‘bore her blushing honors thick upon her.’ No wonder you look uplifted. Listen! Behold! Tell me, do her little feet really touch the solid humble earth?”
As mischievous Bea stopped, with anxiety and awe written large on her saucy features to investigate Berta’s shoes, a door near them opened and a slender woman with fast-graying hair and a curiously still face emerged. There was the ghost of a twinkle in her gray eyes. The transom had not been entirely closed.
“Miss Abbott, may I take that essay again, for a few minor suggestions? If you will drop in after chapel I shall have it ready for you. Permit me once more to congratulate you on its excellence and originality. It has never been my pleasure to read any undergraduate work of greater promise.” She withdrew after the nicker of a quizzical smile in Bea’s direction.
That young lady gasped and then happening to notice that her mouth was ajar carefully closed it with the aid of both hands.
“Berta Abbott! To have your essay praised by Miss Thorne the terrible, who never approves of anything, and yet you stand there like a common mortal! You live, you breathe, you walk, you talk, just the same as you used to do! She says it has promise. I do believe that she never said as much before about anybody except maybe Shakespeare when he was young. Oh, just wait until she sees the Annual!”
Berta had colored hotly. “Bea, don’t tell anybody, please. Of course, I care what she says. I care most of all—I care heaps—about her opinion that the qualities are—are promising. But if I should fizzle out and never amount to anything! It’s all in the future, you see, and I’d be so ashamed to have the girls quoting her now. If I shouldn’t win the fellowship, if I had to go to teaching next year and give it up——”