“You won’t get a chance. Ten minutes at most, and then off you go, and not a peep at another book till to-morrow morning.”
“Marian—really—I must! Just for ten minutes, to revive my memory.”
“I’ll tell you a story!” said Marian quietly—“a true story from my own experience. It was when I was at school and going in for the Cambridge Senior, the last week, when we were having the exams. We had slaved all the term, and were at the last gasp. The head girl was one Annie Macdiarmid, a marvel of a creature, the most all-round scholar I’ve ever met. She was invariably first in everything, and I usually came in a bad third. Well, we’d had an arithmetic exam, one day, pretty stiff, but not more so than usual, and on this particular morning at eleven o’clock we were waiting to hear the result. The Mathematic Master was a lamb—so keen, and humorous, and just—a rageur at times, but that was only to be expected. He came into the room, papers in hand, his mouth screwed up, and his eyebrows nearly hidden under his hair. We knew at a glance that something awful had happened. He cleared his throat several times, and began to read aloud the arithmetic results. ‘Total, a hundred. Bessie Smith, eighty-seven.’ There was a rustle of surprise. Not Annie Macdiarmid? Just Bessie—an ordinary sort of creature, who wasn’t going in for the Local at all. ‘Mary Ross, eighty-two. Stella Bruce, seventy-four.’ Where did I come in? I’d never been lower than that. ‘Kate Stevenson, sixty-four.’ Some one else fifty, some one else forty, and thirty and twenty, and still not a mention of Annie Macdiarmid or of me. You should have seen her face! I shall never forget it. Green! and she laced her fingers in and out, and chewed, and chewed. I was too stunned to feel. The world seemed to have come to an end. Down it came—sixteen, fourteen, ten—and then at last—at bitter, long last—‘Miss Marian White, six! Miss Macdiar-mid, Two!’”
Darsie stared beneath the brush, drawing a long breath of dismay.
“What did you do?”
“Nothing! That was where he showed himself so wise. An ordinary master would have raged and stormed, insisted upon our working for extra hours, going over and over the old ground, but he knew better. He just banged all the books together, tucked them under his arm, and called out: ‘No more work! Put on your hats and run off home as fast as you can go, and tell your mothers from me to take you to the Waxworks, or a Wild Beast show. Don’t dare to show yourselves in school again until Monday morning. Read as many stories as you please, but open a school book at your peril!’”
Marian paused dramatically, Darsie peered at her through a mist of hair, and queried weakly, “Well?”
“Well—so we didn’t! We just slacked and lazed, and amused ourselves till the Monday morning, and then, like giants refreshed, we went down to the fray and—”
“And what?”
“I’ve told you before! I got second-class honours, and the Macdiarmid came out first in all England, distinction in a dozen subjects—arithmetic among them. So now, Miss Garnett, kindly take the moral to heart, and let me hear no more nonsense about ‘reviving memories.’ Your memory needs putting to sleep, so that it may wake up refreshed and active after a good night’s rest.”