“I have preached until I am tired. We must leave her alone now. I am going to take her home with me, and Mother intends keeping her after I go on to your house. She is quite in love with Mother, and is as nearly demonstrative with her, as it is possible for Mary to be with anyone. We shall be a very congenial party at your house, Constance. You always do manage to get together people that suit.”
“I am afraid that you will take back that remark when you know of one more invitation that I want to give today.”
“What in the world do you mean?”
“Don’t be stunned, but I want to have Margery Ainsworth. Shall I?”
“The idea of asking us whom you shall invite to your own home! How absurd!”
“But you don’t like Margery.”
“I hadn’t known that you did either,” Dolly said frankly.
“I have felt a little sorry for her lately. We have seen more or less of each other all our lives; we both live in New York, and as children we went to the same kindergarten, and we have seen each other with some frequency during all the in-between years. Just now Margery is not having an easy time. Instead of being a junior, as she would have been in the ordinary course of events, she is only a freshman, but I have learned that she is doing extra work and has taken some extra examinations. She hopes to come into our class as a full sophomore after Christmas.”
“I wonder what has roused her so. She was never a student in any sense of the word, last year.”
“She knows that her father is earnest in his determination to have her complete her course here, and so she is resolved to get through as quickly as possible. She has lost one year, but there is no reason why she should lose two. She is discovering unsuspected capabilities for study in herself; you must have noticed that she takes no recreation and has no friends. She is settling down into a mere ‘grind.’”