“Yes, certainly you’ve got to help a rival qualify for a competition in which she is likely to defeat you. Do you realize that?” Berta swung Laura around in front of her and studied her curiously while she spoke. “You are a good steady worker, you understand. You have critical ability and a simple, sincere style. If elected you would make an excellent editor, but—now listen, but, I say, you are not a genius like Lucine Brett. She is brilliant. Oh, I acknowledge that, even if I do despise her for being selfish and disagreeable and ego——”
“Hush! She tries—she doesn’t understand——You mustn’t talk that way. I won’t listen. I promised to be her friend. She wonders why the girls don’t like her.”
“And yet she expects you to help her defeat you! She is willing to accept that sacrifice from you! When it means so much to you that——”
“Oh, hush, Berta!” Laura slipped out of the range of that keen straight-ahead gaze and nestled under the protecting arm again. “She doesn’t know that I am eligible, I tell you. My articles weren’t signed usually except with initials. And she is not thinking about other girls’ qualifications—she’s bothered about her own. It’s got to be a fair race with everybody in it, if they want to be. Of course she will be elected—there isn’t a doubt—and I’ll be as glad as any one.”
“Yes!” Berta’s voice veered from sarcasm to genuine anxiety. “You’ll be glad—but you’ll be glad at home. You can’t come back to college—you told me so yourself—unless you are elected editor. That’s why I called you out just now. Did your uncle really say that he was disappointed in your career here?”
Laura cleared her throat. “He doesn’t like it because I haven’t won any honors yet. Don’t you know how almost every girl here came from a school where she was the brightest star and carried off all the prizes and things like that? My uncle doesn’t understand. He thinks it is the fault of the college because I haven’t done anything great. Oh, you know, Berta. I—I do hate to talk in such a conceited way. He doesn’t realize that I am not brighter than the rest and can’t dazzle. He wants me to win an honor that he can put in the papers at home. He says if I don’t distinguish myself this year, I might as well stop and go to the Normal next fall. He thinks college is too expensive. This editorship is the only chance, because—because there isn’t anything else for our class now that the offices are filled and committees appointed. He didn’t like it because my articles in the magazine were signed with initials and not the whole name. He said, ‘Well, niece Laura, let me see your name printed plain in that list of editors, and then we’ll decide about next year.’ He—he’s disappointed.”
“And yet,” Berta spoke slowly, “you are going to help Lucine Brett with that essay. And you know how much my little sister cares about being at college with you.”
Laura gave a startled jump and turned to run. “Oh, Berta, I had forgotten. She’s waiting. I’ve stayed too long. She’ll be so angry!”
“Let her,” growled Berta; but Laura had fled.
Meanwhile Lucine when left alone had dropped the sheets of her essay in her lap and planting her elbows on the sill crouched forward, staring miserably out at the brown soaked lawn flecked with sodden snowdrifts in the shadows of the evergreens that were bending before a rollicking March wind.