“Conquer what, I wonder?” asked Lily. “Not the prize, for all of us are waiting, and there is only one prize.”
“What do you think you conquer by waiting, Marion?” asked Miss Blake of the girl, who had been showing no impatience, but busied herself working on a new strip of her favorite fan-pattern lace.
“I suppose,” said Marion, thoughtfully, “by exercising patience we conquer our own restless spirits.”
“Now, Marion,” said Lily, in a despairing tone, “you’re going to turn goody-goody, I know you are! You’ll live to be a female exhorter or something horrid of that sort if you get off such solemn sentences as that! Extemporate in your callow youth! just think of it! But reflect on what you’re giving up, for, though I love you to distraction now, my affection is not proof against preaching; so don’t, I beseech you, show symptoms of it!”
For answer Marion fired a big air-filled ball of Elfie’s at her as a convincing proof that she was not utterly given over to solemnity, and, Lily gayly returning the throw, the two were soon so deeply engaged in a riotous game that Mr. Bellamy stood smiling at them in the door for some minutes before they saw him.
The general confusion which was allowable because school had virtually closed the day before being instantly quieted, Mr. Bellamy took his place on the platform, and, looking kindly down on the bright young faces upturned to him, said:
“You will remember me, I think, and give me credit for keeping my engagement. It is just one year since I spoke to you before and offered a prize in memory of my daughter.”
Here he laid upon the table a long envelope.
“This,” he said, “contains a check for three hundred dollars, with a blank yet to be filled in. What name is to fill the blank is indicated by the words upon the envelope, ‘For the most deserving,’ and who that title describes I am going to leave you to decide. My little Elfie will hand you each a slip of paper upon which I beg you to write the name of the one whom you individually think most worthy of the prize according to your own estimation of the word ‘deserving.’”
Elfie skipped around with the slips of paper, and after ten minutes, which were spent by her grandfather and Mrs. Abbott in earnest, low-toned conversation, she re-gathered the paper slips in a little covered basket, each girl folding her paper so that the writing was concealed.