College leaves, college berries, picked with Mabel....
Supposing you looked like Mabel, would you love beauty even more passionately, or be so jealous of it that you hated it?
Her eyes yearned at Judith. It was curious: they had in them a sort of avid glint—almost like the eyes of old men in railway-carriages.... And did Freda maliciously encourage her to wear pink flannel? And....
‘One thing more,’ she said. ‘I do hope you won’t allow yourself.... I mean we mustn’t allow ourselves to—to get into a foolish set. It’s so difficult to know at first.... There’s a set here, I’m told’—she paused, flushing unbecomingly to her forehead—‘there’s a set here that thinks a great deal too much about—about going out, and dancing, and—men—all that sort of silliness.... There, I’m sure you don’t mind my telling you. You can always come to me for advice.... I’m told the Mistress judges so by the people we go about with....
‘Good night, Miss Earle,’ she finished earnestly. ‘There’s your way: up the stairs and turn to the right. I’ll look out for you at breakfast to-morrow.’
Black Mabel. Haunted days and nights stretched out. No hope. No escape. Three years of Mabel settling down like a nightmare-bat, blotting out the light. Nobody but Mabel was going to speak to you for three years.
She passed two maids, flaxen-haired, red-cheeked, thick-featured Cambridgeshire types. They were turning out the lights in the corridors; and they smiled broadly at her. Maids were always nice, anyway.
‘Good night,’ she said shyly.
‘Good night, Miss.’
At the corner of the corridor she heard one remark to the other: ‘There’s a sweet faice.’