Six months had passed by. The elder pupils at Horsham had gone tremblingly through the ordeal of the Oxford senior examination in July, and Mary, having achieved distinction in three separate subjects, was now busy preparing for the mathematical group of the Cambridge higher local examination in December. She was eventually going on to college, and intended to devote her life to teaching, to which prospect she looked forward with an equanimity which Dreda regarded with mystified amazement.
“And you like it! You are content to think of spending your life in a schoolroom, going over and over the same dull old books, Mary! How can you?”
But Mary could very easily, it appeared.
“Why not, Dreda?” she inquired. “The books are not dull to me, and surely it is a noble and interesting life to hand on the lamp of learning from one generation to another. It’s the work that appeals most to me. Ever since I was a child I have wished to be a schoolmistress.”
“Oh, well, I shouldn’t mind it myself—for a time,” Dreda conceded carelessly. “When one has suffered under the yoke, it would be a kind of satisfaction to boss it oneself for a change. I’d quite like to be a headmistress—a horribly strict Head—and make all the girls c–c–ringe before me—for a term, say; but after that—no thank you! I want a wider scope for my life than a stupid old school-house.”
Mary smiled, in an elderly, forbearing fashion.
“We are all different, dear Dreda. It would not do if we were made alike. You and I have not the same vocation.”
“No; I shall marry,” announced Dreda, blandly unconscious of the inference of her words. “I am one of the old-fashioned womanly girls—(it says in the papers, ‘Would there were more of them!’)—who shine best in their own homes. I’m not learned, and I don’t pretend to be; but I can keep house, and order servants about, as well as anybody, and I intend to be very hospitable and give lots of dinners and parties and make my husband proud of me by being the best-dressed woman in the room, and so witty and charming that everything will go with a roar. That’s all I want. I haven’t an ambitious nature.”
Mary’s long upper lip looked longer than ever as she listened to this egotistical tirade. She was a plain-looking girl, and the lack of humour in her composition made her somewhat dull and unattractive in manner; but she possessed great strength of character, and was never found lacking in the courage of her opinions. Her opinion at this moment was that Etheldreda Saxon needed a downright good snubbing, and she set herself to administer it without a qualm.
“My dear Dreda, there is nothing in the world you understand as little as your own character. I never met a girl who was so blind to her own defects. Not ambitious! How can you say such a thing in the same breath as that in which you express your longing for admiration? One may be ambitious for unworthy aims as well as for worthy ones; and your desires are all for poor, worldly things which pass away, leaving no one better or wiser. It is false modesty to say you are not clever; you would not allow anyone else to make such a statement unchallenged. If you chose to exert yourself to overcome your faults of carelessness and frivolity, you might take a very fair average position among your companions.”