Minerva crunched her sandwich.
“Your life at Mill Town High School must have been one grand triumphal progress, judging from your medals, Miss Higgins,” said Edith Williams finally.
Minerva glanced proudly down at the awards of merit.
“There are a good many of them,” she observed, with a smile that was almost more than they could stand. “And there are more of them still. I’ve won one or two medals each year ever since I started to school. But I don’t like to wear them all at once.”
“That’s very modest of you.”
“Are you going to specialize on any subjects, Miss Higgins?” asked Margaret Wakefield, really meaning to be kind and lead the girl away from topics which made her appear ridiculous.
“Biology, I think. But I am interested in Comparative Philology, too, and after I skim through a little Greek and Latin, I intend to take up some of the ancient languages, Sanskrit and Hebrew.”
Was it possible that Minerva was making game of them? They regarded her suspiciously, but she seemed sublimely unconscious.
“Why not study also the ancient tongue of the Basques?” asked Edith, quite gravely.
“That would be interesting,” replied Minerva, “but I want to get through this little college course first.”
Molly batted her heavenly eyes and suddenly burst out laughing.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I didn’t mean to be rude, but the course at Wellington doesn’t seem so small to us. We have to study all the time and then just barely pull through. I’ve almost flunked twice in mathematics. I wish I could call it a little course.”
“Ah, well, we are not all Minervas,” observed Margaret. “Some of us are just ordinary school girls learning the rudiments of education. We have not had the advantages of Mill Town High School, and if any of us have won gold medals we never show them.”
This measured rebuff, however, had no more effect on Minerva’s impervious vanity than a cup of water dashed against a granite boulder. She was already up, wandering about the room, boldly examining the girls’ belongings, ostentatiously reading the titles of books aloud.
“Plays by Molière. Oh, yes, I read them in the original two years ago. They’re easy. ‘Green’s Short History of the English People,’ very interesting book. ‘The Broad Highway.’ I never read fiction. Only biography and history – ”
Edith Williams, stretched at her ease on the divan, gave an inaudible groan and turned her face to the wall.
Molly glanced helplessly about her.
“‘The Primavera,’ that’s by Botticelli,” went on the girl, infatuated by her own intelligence. “Good artist, but I don’t care for the old masters as a general thing. They are always out of drawing.”
Katherine rolled her eyes up into her head until only the whites could be seen, which gave her the horrible aspect of a corpse.
There was a long and eloquent silence. Presently Minerva took her departure, and Molly, hospitable to the last gasp, saw her to the door and invited her to come again.
With the door safely locked and Minerva out of earshot, there was a general collapse. Nobody laughed, but the room was filled with painful sounds, moans and groans. Judy pretended to faint on top of Edith, and Molly sat in a remote corner of the room.
Somehow, they felt beaten, vanquished.
“I am sore all over with repressed emotions,” cried Judy. “I couldn’t stand another séance like that.”
“Does she know as much as she claims?” asked Nance.
“Of course not,” exclaimed Margaret irritably. “If she really knew she wouldn’t claim anything. It’s only ignorant people who boast of knowledge. I suppose she has been looked up to for so long that she regards herself as a fountain of wisdom.”
“She must be taken down,” said Edith firmly. “This mustn’t be allowed to go on at Wellington.”
“But hazing isn’t allowed,” put in Molly.
“Not by hazing, goosie. By some homely little practical joke that will show herself to herself as others see her.”
“All right,” consented Molly. She felt indeed that something should be done to save poor Minerva Higgins from eternal ridicule.
“If anybody has suggestions to make,” here announced Margaret Wakefield, self-constituted chairman of all committees, impromptu or otherwise, “they may be stated in writing or announced by word of mouth to-morrow night in our rooms at a fudge party.”
“Accepted,” they cried in one breath.
In the meantime, Minerva Higgins was writing home to her mother that she had been, if not the guest of honor, almost that, at a junior tea, and had found the girls rather interesting though poor talkers. In fact, it was necessary to do almost all the talking herself.
CHAPTER III.
IN THE CLOISTERS
Life in the Quadrangle hummed busily on. The girls found themselves in the very heart of college affairs. As a matter of fact the old Queen’s circle had been somewhat restricted, having narrowed down to less than a dozen; whereas now, they associated with many times that number and were invited to a bewildering succession of teas and fudge parties.
Also they were nearer to the library, the gymnasium, the classrooms and the cloisters. Here, during the warm, hazy days of Indian summer Molly loved to walk. It was not such a popular place as she had imagined with the Quadrangle girls, and often she was quite alone in the arcade, bordered now with hydrangeas turning a delicate pink under the autumn suns.
One afternoon, a few days after Margaret’s fudge party to discuss the question of Minerva Higgins, Molly sought a few quiet moments in the cloistered walk. It was a half hour before closing-up time, but she would not miss the six strokes of the tower clock again, as she had on her first day at college two years before.
She usually confined her walks to the far side of the arcade, keeping well away from the side of the cloisters on which the studies of some of the faculty opened. That afternoon she carried her volume of Rossetti with her, and pacing slowly up and down, she read in a low musical voice to herself:
“‘The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.’”
Waves of rhythm ran through Molly’s head, and when she reached the end of the walk she turned mechanically and went the other way without pausing in her reading.
Many girls studied in this way in the cloisters and it was not an unusual sight, but Molly made a picture not soon to be forgotten by any one who might chance to wander in the arcade at that hour. She was still spare and undeveloped, but the grace that was to come revealed itself in the girlish lines of her figure. Her eyes seemed never more serenely, deeply blue than now, and her hair, disordered from the tam o’shanter
