The next morning when Judy read over her night’s work, she enjoyed it very much. “It’s really quite interesting,” she said to herself. “I really don’t see how I ever did it.”
She delivered the essay at Miss Pomeroy’s office and felt vastly proud when she laid it on the table near the desk. Her own cleverness told her that she had done a good thing.
“I don’t believe Wordsworth ever enjoyed his own works more than I do mine,” she observed, as she strolled across the campus. “And because I’ve been bon enfant, I shall now take a rest and go forth in search of amusement.” She turned her face toward the village, where a kind of Oriental bazaar was being held by some Syrians. It would be fun, she thought, to look over their bangles and slippers and bead necklaces.
In the meantime, Miss Pomeroy was engaged in reading over Judy’s theme, which, having been handed in last, had come to her notice first. Such is the luck of the procrastinator.
She smiled when she saw the title, but the theme interested her greatly, and presently she tucked it into her long reticule, familiar to every Wellington girl, and hastened over to the President’s house.
“Emma,” she said (the two women were old college mates, and were Emma and Louise in private), “I think this might interest you. It’s a theme by one of my freshman girls. A strange subject for a girl of seventeen, but she’s quite a remarkable person, if she would only apply herself. Somehow, it seems, whether consciously or unconsciously, to bear on what has been occupying us all so much since last Friday.”
The President put on her glasses and began to read Judy’s theme. Every now and then she gave a low, amused chuckle.
“The child writes like Marie Corelli,” she exclaimed, laughing. “And yet it is clever and it does suggest——” she paused and frowned. “I wonder if she could and doesn’t dare tell?” she added slowly.
“I wonder,” echoed Miss Pomeroy.
“Is she one of the Queen’s Cottage girls? They appear to be rather a remarkable lot this year.”