“Why so silent, Etheldreda the Ready? Can it be that you have been so busy arranging the lives of other people that you have not had time to think of your own?”
The dart struck home once more, but before there was time to answer Susan rushed to the defence.
“It’s just because Dreda is thinking that she does not talk. Dreda will win the prize. No one has a chance against her, but it is such a thrilling subject that it will be interesting to try. The difficulty will be to keep within the limit; only three thousand words—”
“Only! My dear, do you know what three thousand words mean? I counted up one sheet of foolscap, and it came to two hundred and fifty. How on earth could one find enough to say about life to fill twelve whole pages?”
Flora was transparently in earnest, her blue, opaque-looking eyes roving from face to face, inviting sympathy and understanding; but Susan gave a clear little laugh of derision.
“I could fill volumes! It’s a wonderful, wonderful theme—a voyage into the dark—a battle to be fought, a victory to be won, a mountain to be climbed, or perhaps no mountain at all, but just a long, long road, on a dead level plain. Work and effort, and failure and success, sorrow and joy, and at the end the secret—the great secret—solved at last!”
Susan’s voice trembled, her slight little form shook with emotion, she pressed her hands against her knees to still their trembling. The girls stared at the floor, or exchanged furtive glances of embarrassment. Susan was “too too for words” in her high falutin’ moods; she talked just like people in books; silly nonsense that no one could understand! She was going to leave school when she was eighteen and help her mother in the house, because the two elder girls wanted to be teachers. Why couldn’t she say so straight out, instead of mooning about secrets, and battles, and mountains to be climbed? Flora sniggered into her handkerchief, Barbara gaped, Nancy tilted her head, and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, Dreda wakened out of her dream, and sat up flushed and eager.
“Susan, stop! You mustn’t! If you tell us your ideas we may copy them without meaning to do it... If you put thoughts into our heads they stay there and grow, and we can’t send them away, but they are yours. You ought to keep them to yourself.”
“My dear, she says she has enough to fill a volume. She needn’t grudge a few to her starving friends,” cried Nancy in would-be reproach. “Confide in me, Susan dear! I’ll sit at your feet, and gobble up all the pearls that you drop, and perhaps in the end I may win the prize myself. I don’t see why it should be taken for granted that only two girls have a chance. There’s a lot of vulgar prejudice in this school, but Mr Rawdon will judge with an unbiased mind. I have thought more than once when I’ve been reading his books that the style was rather like my own, and I’ve a sort of a—kind of a—what’s the word?—premonition that he’ll like me best.”
There was a general laugh, but Nancy was a favourite despite her teasing ways, so the laughter was good-tempered and sympathetic, and it was easy to see that if by chance the prize fell to her lot the award would be a popular one. Nancy was incurably lazy, but the conviction lingered in the minds of her companions that “she could be clever if she chose,” and it would seem quite in character that she should suddenly wake up to the surprise and confusion of her competitors. Dreda looked round with an anxious air, as if recognising a new, and formidable competitor. She determined to begin making notes that very evening, and asked suddenly: