A Houseful of Girls

by Sarah Tytler

This distempered frame of mind was hardly calculated for the rapid reception and assimilation of these particles, terminations, and cases of philological nicety in which May began to recognize that she was inaccurate and deficient.

If Tray could but have come to her, and laid his shining black nose in her lap, barked in her face, and invited her to take a turn in the grounds of Thirlwall Hall, he would have ceased to be the doleful, shadowy phantom of a Tray she was constantly seeing now, along with other phantoms. A game of romps with her four-footed friend would have done something to dissipate the mental sickness which was prostrating May's powers. But Thirlwall Hall was moulded on the men's colleges, and there were no dogs for the girl any more than for the boy graduates.

Miss Lascelles was at once conscientious and kind, with considerable natural sagacity; but she led a busy, rather over-burdened life, and had little time to spare. Naturally she was tempted, in spite of the logical faculty which made her a capital principal of Thirlwall Hall, to leap at conclusions like many of her weaker-minded sisters. She had taken it for granted that Miss Millar was simply a spoilt child, without more ability and information than had just served her to surmount the preliminary test of admission to Thirlwall Hall, where, nevertheless, she had no business to be. Her time would be completely wasted; she would only be wretched, and serve to make other people uncomfortable. However, as she had stood the preliminary test, and was at Thirlwall Hall for the rest of the term, the most humane thing to do was to set some other girl who was not particularly engaged on her own account, who could be safely trusted with such a charge, who had plenty of acquaintances at St. Ambrose's to render the charge lighter, to make friends with the poor girl, take her about, cheer and entertain her, as far as possible, till the end of her stay.

Miss Lascelles, in default of better, fixed on Miss Vanhansen, the American young lady, as a friend for May. Miss Vanhansen had plenty of time on her hands, plenty of confidence, plenty of money. She had taken even exclusive St. Ambrose's by storm, for Athens itself would have found it difficult to resist her racy indifference, her shrewd mother-wit, her superb frocks, and her sublime heaps of dollars. At the same time she was perfectly good-natured and quite trustworthy in her own free and easy way. She had scandalized Miss Lascelles in the earlier days of their acquaintance by her energetic determination to have "a good time of it." She had made the lady principal's hair stand on end by calmly suggesting nice rides and rows and luncheons at village inns, tête-à-tête with the "mooniest" young fellows who could be laid hold of and crammed with stories about America and the doings of American girls.

But practically Miss Vanhansen had the good sense to do at Rome as the Romans did; she confined her independence to those sallies of the tongue, which were not without a rousing charm in a place grown partly languid, partly esoteric, by dint of a superabundance of culture and of college statutes elaborate, involved and irreversible as the laws of the Medes and the Persians.

Keturah Vanhansen rather liked the task imposed upon her. It appealed at once to her kindliness of nature and her love of creating a sensation; she would rouse this drooping young beauty who showed such a sinful disregard of her complexion and eyes. Miss Vanhansen was herself as sallow as a nabob, her small eyes, by an unkind perversity on the part of her fairy god-mother, were of a fishy paleness, yet she managed to her great satisfaction, by dint of dress and carriage, to be a striking-looking and all but a handsome girl, so that she had no overpowering reason to be jealous of her better-endowed neighbours. She would astonish Miss Millar's weak nerves, and give her "a wrinkle or two," before she had done with her.

At first May shrank back a good deal from the advances of the conquering princess from the Far West; but here the English girl's humility and good feeling stood her in better stead than her judgment. May was grateful to Miss Vanhansen, and went so far as to be flattered by her attentions even when they gave the recipient no pleasure. That frame of mind could not last at seventeen. May, the most unsophisticated and easily pleased of human beings, was won from her sad dreams of Redcross. She was deeply obliged, she was faintly amused. At last she was fairly launched on such a mild course of St. Ambrose gaieties as two girls in a college could with grace pursue. This included tennis parties, rowing parties, water-lily and fritillary hunts, "strawberries," concerts instead of lectures in the afternoons as well as in the evenings, afternoon teas—not tête-à-tête, not confined to a party of three, but under what even Miss Lascelles would have considered sufficient surveillance in the rooms of liberal heads of houses, hospitable young dons, social, idle undergraduates. These had no more business on their hands than could be summed up in cricket-matches or boat-races, and in meeting Miss Vanhansen and listening to her queer unconventional remarks.

At all these gatherings, May Millar in the budding beauty of seventeen and the simplicity of her youthful dress, with her modesty and naïveté, was made very welcome. Soon she began to feel herself ashamed of the extent to which she was enjoying herself, as she was swept along by the stream.

She was able to write home now long letters full of girlish enthusiasm over the kindness of Miss Vanhansen, and the beauties and delights of St. Ambrose's. Dora, though greatly relieved in her ungrudging devotion to May, to find that Tom Robinson's words were fulfilled, was still a little puzzled to understand how May could find time for so many gay doings, and her studies into the bargain. But Dr. and Mrs. Millar could only be happy in the happiness of their child, and hug themselves on having thought more of her welfare than of her feelings at the moment of parting. It was right she should see all the charming sights which were to be seen, and enter a little into the special attractions of the great University town—that would not prevent her from settling down and doing her proper work presently. You might trust the lady principal and a studious young creature like May, who liked to be busy with her books far before any other occupation, with a great deal more license than that came to.

Then a new turn was given to the dissipation in which May was dipping. The longing in which she had indulged, ever since she had first heard of its possible fulfilment, was granted—a Greek play was to be acted by the young women who stood for the "Grecians" of the year at Thirlwall Hall, and May was there to see. From the moment the play was decided upon to the hour of the first rehearsal, May spoke, thought, and dreamed of nothing save "Alcestis."