“You’ll do,” cried Belle. “I’ll just enter your name in my book. ‘Marjorie Chetwynd comes to St. Wode’s College as soon as possible.’ The spring term begins in a fortnight, Marjorie, so you have little time to lose.—Now, Eileen, let me look at you. Yes, you also would do well; but I think perhaps your forte will be modern languages and English literature. All lighter accomplishments you will of course eschew.”
“Oh, please don’t leave the room,” said Lettie, bounding forward, “until you have placed your fingers on my brow to see what I am worth. Really, this is most interesting. You are a kind of magician, Belle.”
“You will be one of the frivols; one of the drones of
our hive,” replied Belle sternly. “Don’t, I beg of you, come to St. Wode’s.”
“I can only tell you this,” answered Lettie, running after Belle as she was flying downstairs, “if Eileen and Marjorie go I mean to accompany them.”
[CHAPTER VII—THE FATE OF THE GIRLS.]
Belle Acheson was a young woman who never let the grass grow under her feet. Having rushed downstairs at a headlong speed, she now presented herself in the drawing-room.
“I have just examined the frontal developments of Marjorie’s and Eileen’s heads,” she said, speaking in a loud, rapid voice, and glancing in the direction where Mrs. Chetwynd and Mrs. Acheson were seated together on a sofa. “I have examined the frontal developments of the two girls, and I am glad to tell you that they both show marked intellectuality. I have recommended them to join me at St. Wode’s College, Wingfield, immediately. Will you, therefore, Mrs. Chetwynd, kindly take the necessary steps to see that this is carried out? You must write to our principal, Miss Lauderdale, asking her to give you all particulars as to the necessary steps to be taken for admission. If the girls have not already passed some public examination, they must pass Responsions. The subjects are Latin, Greek, mathematics. But if they have already passed the London Matriculation, or the Cambridge Higher Local, or the——”
“My dear, my dear!” cried Mrs. Acheson, “you are positively bewildering my dear friend. What are you driving at?”
“I am driving at nothing,” said Belle, in a voice of dignity. “I am stating facts. The girls wish to enter St. Wode’s. To do so they must have passed, or will have