"Judy Kean, there must be a depression on your head where there should be a perfectly good bump of duty. Don't you know we have only five minutes to get to the class? I'd rather be late to almost anything that Lit. II."
"And why, pray?" demanded Judy, rushing to keep up with Molly's long steps.
"Oh, well, because it's interesting."
"Is that the only reason?"
"Why don't you turn into a period occasionally, Juliana? You are every other variety of punctuation mark,—dashes, exclamations, interrogations. Sometimes you're a comma and I've known you to be a semicolon, but when, oh, when have you come to a full stop?"
"All this long peroration——"
"Pero—what?"
"Means that you are avoiding the real question."
"Here we are," ejaculated Molly with a sigh of relief as she ran upstairs and entered the class room at the same moment that Professor Green appeared from another door.
Molly freely admitted to her friends that English Literature was the most interesting study she had. She took more pains over the preparation for this class than for any of her other lessons. She was always careful not to be late, but then sat timidly and modestly in the back row with the girls who wished to avoid being called upon to recite. The Professor's lectures, however, led her into an enchanted country, the land of poetry and romance. Perhaps, at first, he thought she really wished to avoid being questioned and that her spellbound expression was only indifference. Certainly he had seldom tested her interest until one day during a lecture on the Pre-Raphaelite artists and poets he calmly requested her to stand up before the entire class and read Rossetti's "Blessed Damozel." Blushing hotly, she began the reading in a thin, frightened voice, but presently the amused faces of her friends faded away; her voice regained its full measure of strength and beauty, and when she had finished, she became aware that somewhere hidden within the wellsprings of her mind was a power she had not known of before. Molly's classmates were much impressed by her performance, but there was a faint smile on the Professor's face that seemed to imply that he was not in the least surprised.