“And he was just away being framed!” moaned Vivian.
“Where’s Lucile?”
“Oh, she’s probably moaning in her room over Fate!”
“She needs a tonic!” said Priscilla. “Let’s go and tell her so.”
“It won’t do a bit of good,” Virginia observed, as they started down the hall to employ the remaining five minutes in disciplining Lucile. “It’s her temperament, you know; and, besides, the very stones of Paris breathe Romance!”
CHAPTER XIX—THE SENIOR PAGEANT
Commencement came with hurrying feet, showing little regard for Seniors, who daily visited the old haunts, grown so dear to them, and hourly hated worse the thought of leaving St. Helen’s. Every spot seemed dearer than ever before—the cottages, which had been their homes, the Retreat, filled with the memories of chapel and vespers, every path in the woods, every spot where certain flowers grew. It would be hard to leave them all; but far harder to say good-by to one another, and to the teachers and girls who were to return; for, as Anne said on every possible occasion, “There’s no use talking! It never will seem the same again!” So in all the festivities of the closing days there was a sadness—a strange hollow feeling in one’s body, a lump which often came unexpectedly into one’s throat.
To Virginia, this season of her first Commencement was one of conflicting emotions. She was torn between a joy in the perfect June days, and a sorrow that they must soon come to an end; between the happy anticipation of seeing her father, who, with her grandmother and Aunt Nan, was to be at St. Helen’s for the closing week, and the sad realization that St. Helen’s would never seem the same without the Seniors, and that The Hermitage would be a sadly different place without Mary and Anne.
She found studying during those last few weeks the most difficult thing in the world; and had it not been for the cup competition between Hathaway and The Hermitage, which was daily growing more close, she, like many of the others, would have been sorely tempted to take a vacation. It would be so much more “vital,” she said to herself, and ten times more appropriate, to close her geometry and walk through the woods with Priscilla, or sit in Mary’s room, and plan for the wonderful days to come; for Mrs. Williams had “found a way,” and Jack and Mary were actually to spend the month of August in Wyoming with Virginia and Donald. The trip was to be their Commencement gift, for Jack was likewise graduating that year from the Stanford School. “It’s too good to be true,” Virginia kept saying to herself, “it’s too good to be true,” and deep in her heart she hoped and hoped that Mr. and Mrs. Winthrop might consent to Priscilla’s going also. They had said they would “think about it,” and that, so Priscilla said, was a hopeful sign.
As she bent over her geometry, preparing for the final examination, there would come before her eyes in place of circles and triangles and parallelograms, visions of sunny August days riding over the foothills, and starlit August nights about a camp-fire in the canyon. It would be such fun for her and Don to show Mary and Jack all the loveliest places in their country. And she would teach Mary to shoot—Mary, who had never in her life held a rifle! Oh, if only the other Vigilantes might come! But she knew that Dorothy was to be in California with her father; and as to Vivian, Virginia could somehow easily picture the horror on timid Mrs. Winter’s face at the thought of Vivian shooting and camping in a canyon! But this was not mastering geometry, and there was the cup! The Hermitage must win it from Hathaway, and the winning or the losing depended upon the success or failure of each one. So, banishing dreams, she went to work again.