Robbie Belle flinched before the passionate low tones, and the roseleaf color in her cheeks went quite white. She handed Berta both tickets. “You may do what you like with mine,” she said and turned slowly away.
Berta fled in the wake of the hurrying seniors. Her head buzzed with frantic arguments. It was her own money—she had earned it. Nobody had a right to dictate what she should do with it. Robbie Belle never could see more than one side of a question. To forbid unnecessary expenditure just because she accepted a loan to carry her through college! Who was to say whether it was unnecessary or not? The Opera was part of her musical education. She would repay the scholarship with interest at the earliest possible date after she began to earn a salary. What meddling insolence! The girls who held scholarships were the brightest and finest in college—some of them. And to treat them as if they were extravagant, silly little spendthrifts! It was honest. Hadn’t she denied herself everything all the year—clubs and dinners and drives and flowers and ribbons and gloves and new books and fine note-paper and that cast of the Winged Victory which she had wanted and wanted and wanted? Not that she assumed any credit for such self-denial—it simply had to be, that was all. But now, this was different. She owed it to herself not to miss such a wonderful occasion. A chance in a century—that was what the senior said.
Ting-aling, ting-aling! jangled the bell madly. The conductor paused, his hand on the strap. A breathless girl sprang upon the platform, darted into the car, tossed a packet upon a convenient lap.
“There are two seats for the Opera. We can’t go.” And she had leaped from the moving steps and vanished through the great iron gates of the Lodge.
Back in the dormitory before the bulletin-board Miss Bonner, the graduate fellow, was staring at the new placard. She gave a slight start of astonishment at a glimpse of Berta hastening past her. Then because she had heard the story from Robbie Belle two minutes earlier, she pretended to be absorbed in the notices, for she suspected that any comment would start the tears that Berta was holding back. However, she was smiling to herself after the girl had vanished up the stairs. When the gong struck for breakfast, she halted at the faculty table to whisper a few words to the professor in her special department. The professor answered, “How glad I am!”
“And you really believe that it would have prejudiced the scholarship committee against Miss Abbott, if she had persisted in this extravagance? She has worked so hard to earn it.”
“I understand,” the professor was sympathetic but unswerving from her convictions; “it seems somewhat cruel when one considers how passionately fond of music the child is. Still you must remember that this scholarship fund is the result of endless self-denial. I have known several alumnæ, to say the least, who have sacrificed greater privileges than visits to the Opera for the sake of contributing an extra mite. Would it be just for one who benefits from the economy of others to spend in self-indulgence?”
Meanwhile Berta, unconscious of the fact that her whole college career and the future to be moulded by it had depended upon her decision to do right in this apparently insignificant respect, had trudged up to a certain lonely room. Robbie Belle lifted a wet face from a consoling pillow.
“Berta!” It was like a soft little shout of triumph. “I knew——”
Berta swallowed a lump in her throat and managed to smile a whimsical smile from behind dewy lashes.