[Descends to the breakfast table.
ACT III.
SCENE 1.—The same as Scene 2, Act I.
MISS ORPHEA BLAGGS solus, reading a letter.
Orphea (reading)—
"My Dearest Orphea—Congratulate me! me, your cousin, Tom Christopher, M.A., Gold Medallist.—Mathematics, and also Natural Sciences; Honours in Classics, and Prizeman in German again. You cannot think how queer I feel with all my blushing honours thick upon me, and more to come. Tuesday! my dear Orphea, Tuesday! Only think of it, Master of Arts, or more correctly Mistress of Arts! Now let the New Zealanders boast, and the Cambridge girls bite their tongues, Canada has caught them up! Ah, my dear Orphea, that is the drop of gall in the cup of your successful cousin—the Canterbury Antipodeans got their honours first. It reminds me of the saying that the nearer to church the farther from heaven, since it is evidently the nearer to the centre of civilization the farther from a University Degree, so far as we unfortunate women are concerned. But never mind! I've proved that Canadian girls are equal in mental power with Canadian boys, and I am only impatient to let the Dons know it.
"And now, my love, for the conclusion of the two years' farce. It has cost me a whole week's sleep to sketch a plan by which to declare my sex in the most becoming manner to my fellow students.
"Do you know, dear, when I look back upon the pleasures of the past two years—how soon we forget the pain!—I am not inclined to regret the step rendered necessary by my devotion to my sex, for use has made me quite at home in the—ah—divided skirt! How many lovely girls have I danced with through the rosy hours who will never more smile on me as they were wont to smile! How many flowers of rhetoric have been wasted on me by the irony of fate! How many billets-doux, so perfumed and [!-- Begin Page 132 --] pretty, lie in my desk addressed to my nether garment! And how many mammas have encouraged Mr. Christopher, who will forever taboo Miss Bloggs! And then the parties and the picnics! Ah, my dear Orphea, what do I not sacrifice on the altar of my sex. But a truce to regrets.
"I am longing to see the elegant costume in which I shall appear before the astonished eyes of the multitude as Miss Bloggs, M.A.