Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/345

 a word to each other ten minutes before, and now they were sitting side by side, hand in hand, like sisters.

"I'm awfully glad I came in," she said.

"So am I," said Eugenia, "I'd been just crazy to talk to you, but you're so many classes higher than me. Oh, how I hate my class—to be put back with all those young ones! And study such turribly stupid things! And the teacher! Such an old frump. And I'm not having anything of what I want. I'm not getting on a bit. What do I care what France did in India before the English got there? I didn't come to France to learn those sort of things! Marise—please can I call you Marise? Do you suppose I'll ever, ever speak French as you do?"

"Why, of course," Marise answered her reasonably, "everybody does, who lives here. Why shouldn't you?" The echo of the famished, burning accent of the other struck now oddly in her ear. She repeated, "Of course you will, if you care to," and went on, "but why should you bother to care so much? What difference does it make? They don't bother themselves to learn English."

Eugenia flashed a look of quick astonishment at her. Apparently this was an entirely new idea to her. After an instant's silent consideration of it, she flung it away with the aggrieved cry, "Oh, but you do! You do!" as though, thought Marise, that incapacitated her from having a valid opinion about it. But this too, like the Eugénie-Eugenia discussion had somehow taken place in another dimension than the one she knew. She was not allowed to ponder the question, however, receiving at this point another impassioned embrace from Eugenia, who cried, "You don't know how glad I am you came! Now it'll be all right. And I've been so miserable. Let's, talk! Let's talk!"

"I must soon be going to a music-lesson," said Marise, glancing at the little jewel-crusted watch, which hung on a black ribbon around the, other girl's neck.

Eugenia caught at her despairingly. "Oh, don't go away. I haven't begun yet! I haven't said a word!" Then struck by another possibility, "Can't I go with you? We could talk in