The evening of the election buried the reform fathoms deep; for Peggy was elected president. When the little band of reformers entered the students' parlour, where the class was already assembled, they received the impression of a huddled flock of sheep, with lowered heads at bay. The evening's proceedings deepened this impression. The class of '9— was worried and bewildered and disgusted; it had travailed in the throes of indecision until it sickened of both alternatives, and fell, like many another, upon the middle course. That course was the choice of Peggy, astonished Peggy, by an overwhelming majority in the good old follow-my-leader fashion; while Pauline and Shirley watched their airy fabric of reform topple to ruin, and then talked of other things during the counting of the votes.
Charlotte Meredith laughed over the result with the rest of the on-lookers, but, rather surprisingly, took the part of the would-be reformers, after a subtle fashion of her own. "After all," she remarked, with an air of elaborate deference to a loudly critical sophomore, "even you and I, Miss West, were freshmen once." And Miss West turned a slow red, and refrained from speech.
It was Charlotte's custom to have her freshman cousin at most of her small teas, so Pauline found nothing remarkable in the appearance, about this time, of a small card on her table, reading, "Tea at five. C. M."; but it was embarrassingly unusual to find in her cousin's study, not the expected circle of graduates, with a senior or two, but only Charlotte herself and Shirley Nairn. The two guests were duly regaled with tea and bonbons by Miss Meredith, who, ignoring late events, tried to put them at their ease. In her whimsical way, she liked them both. There was, however, a spark of covert amusement in her eyes as she passed the teacups; and Pauline, writhing inwardly under this satirical observation, finally came out with:
"I suppose you were pleased with the result of our campaign."
"Naturally," said Charlotte blandly. "One likes to have a guess confirmed—and I was sure of the result; in that way I was pleased. And you?"
Pauline, playing with her teacup, remarked that people weren't usually pleased with having made fools of themselves. Her tone asked for a contradiction, but it did not come, and the three sat silent, listening to the singing of the kettle over the spirit-flame, until Shirley said abruptly:
"Miss Meredith, you were right about the political animals."
Charlotte raised her eyebrows enquiringly, but was perhaps not surprised by what she heard; she may have already reflected that defeat, always hard to bear, comes in its most unbearable form when it makes its victims ridiculous. Shirley and Pauline, having been baulked by very small means in a project of mighty import, had a galling sense of the absurdity of their position, and were bitterly ready to turn on their ungrateful classmates. Therefore Charlotte had the satisfaction of seeing them come over to her point of view with exaggerated enthusiasm. They could not put too strongly the impossibility of any attempt to educate women politically; they thought that a few—a very few, they sadly added—might be trusted for public-spirited and disinterested action; but the mass of women were not large-minded enough to rise above personal considerations.
"What other considerations did the poor things have, in your case?" asked their hostess. "A class president's duties are not so weighty that she needs any distinguished qualifications, and the choice is simply a matter of personal liking. You insisted on a week's analysis of personal likes and dislikes, and the natural result was exaggeration and slander."