“Oh, no, no, no!” she exclaimed impulsively, “that won’t do at all. You must put it at the right so that the light will fall over the left shoulder. Otherwise the shadow of your hand will go scrambling over the paper ahead of your pen. Here, let me show you.”
By the time she had hauled the desk across to its new position, Lila had vanished. Bea found her huddled in a woe-begone heap behind the wardrobe door in her bedroom, and flew to her in dismay.
“Oh, Lila, dearie, did you smash your finger or drop something on your foot? There, don’t cry. I’ll get the witch-hazel and arnica and court-plaster. What is it? Where? Why-ee!” she gasped bewildered, “why, Lila!” for her weeping roommate had pushed her gently away and turned her face to the wall.
“I was doing it for you,” she sobbed. “I was trying to please you, and then you were so cr-cr-cruel! You were cruel.”
“Cruel?” echoed Bea, “why, how? I haven’t done a thing except buy the books I ordered last week. Yours were down in the office, too, but I didn’t have enough money for all, because Sue Merriam borrowed four dollars. She asked after you and said——” Bea hesitated, smitten with novel doubt that she ought to begin to think three times before speaking once where such a sensitive person was concerned.
Lila sat up in swift attention and winked away her tears. “Said what?”
“Oh, nothing much.” Bea wriggled. “Just talking.”
“I insist.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t signify. I was only thinking——” Bea paused again before blurting out. “She said that roommates are good for the character.”
At this Lila rose with such an air of patient endurance that poor Bea felt clumsy, remorseful, injured and perplexed simultaneously. A cloud of resentful silence hovered over them both through the weary hours of the afternoon. Not until the ten o’clock gong sent the echoes booming through the deserted corridors, did Lila break down in a storm of weeping that terrified Bea. She found herself begging pardon, apologizing, caressing, explaining and repenting wholesale of rudeness about the desk, of selfish neglect in the case of the books, of disloyalty in giving ear to Miss Merriam’s gratuitous comments. This gale blew over, leaving one girl with darker circles under her eyes and a more pathetic droop at the corners of her mouth, leaving the other with a fellow feeling for any unfortunate bull who happens to get into a china shop, intentionally or otherwise. Life at college promised to be like walking over exceedingly thin ice every day and all day long.