"I had an unusual and severe attack of piety that prevented me from cutting Pol. Econ. in the morning. It was brought on, I think, by the idea of having to copy six pages of lecture notes on the social state of the indigent Indians."
Eleanor interrupted her. "Oh, I don't in the least care what brought you, now that you're here. I meant, I want to know all about the Atkinsons, what you did and said,—and how many times you upset your glass at table."
Marjorie passed over this insulting thrust, and irrelevantly remarked: "Isn't it a pleasant thought that exam. time is over, and so Betty Hall no longer goes down the corridor warbling 'Earth is my resting place, Heaven is my home,' or 'I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger, I can tarry, I can tarry but a night'?"
Eleanor laughed at the remembrance. "It is, surely. Poor old Betty! Doesn't she suffer more from the fear of being flunked out than any upper-classman you ever saw?—and she makes elaborate preparations for going home at every exam. time. But come back from this digression and stick to the manuscript. Marge, conversationally you're a tramp!"
"About the Atkinsons? They're very well, thank you.—Oh, don't break my head with the tongs and I will be good! I have a lovely tale to tell you, really, Eleanor. I met a man——"
"Impossible!" interjected Eleanor.
"Who's digressing now?" demanded Marjorie.
A meek small voice from the gathering darkness said "Little Ellie," and then Marjorie went on; "a man whom you know quite well in the general if not in the particular—a handsome, well-groomed, middle-aged man with iron grey hair, serenest confidence in his own judgment and estimate of things, and—here you may perceive the rub, Lee—unconquerable prejudice against the essentially modern woman—in the abstract."
"Ah!" breathed Eleanor, scenting the battle from afar.
"In the concrete, I confess, she shows him to be 'not impregnable as a bulwark of archaism,' as Dr. Phillips would say." Marjorie was smiling at the fire, which was only half lighting the corner of the dim study. "Eleanor, from the moment that I first heard that man speak and open fire on the kind of thing the modern girl is going to become, I marked him for my prey. Oh! it was lovely," laughed she suddenly, rocking back and forth in an ecstasy of delighted amusement, "it was lovely to see the mighty fall."