Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/516

474 with her husband, Mr. Morgan, to see what was the matter. Kittie told them all about it, and afterwards Maudie Joyce and Mabel Blossom told them all about it, too, and for some strange reason they thought it was funny, and George Morgan laughed till his sides ached. Josephine did too, but not so much, and she kept saying, "The poor child!" But George advised Kittie very earnestly to drink all she could at the fountain of learning, and take it up as fast as it came out, because if she didn't it might overflow and drown her. Kittie did not know what he meant, and neither did we—grown men and women say such silly things sometimes,—but it seemed to mean that she was to go right on with our lessons, because they didn't take her home and nothing happened. They did send her a lovely box, though, with a new silk waist in it and a whole cold turkey and a big cake, and lots of pickles and things; but it was not very comforting to Kittie, because she didn't have time to eat it. So we ate most of it for her, and the things were very good. Mabel Blossom wrote to George and told him they were and how we had enjoyed them, and she told him also of the gratifying progress Kittie was making in her studies. She knew that would please him.

It was true, too. I never saw any one improve the way Kittie James did. Of course we must remember that she had the benefit of special and kind of expert instruction, because each of us was teaching her the thing we liked best, and we all enjoyed doing it. We had watched the methods of our teachers, and we improved them wherever we could. Sister Irmingarde used to let us talk about other things in the rhetoric class, but I kept Kittie strictly to the book, for I was determined she should pass that examination. You see, it had got to be a vital matter with us. Each girl wanted Kittie to pass in her branch, anyhow—the one she was teaching her,—and I, for one, felt it would be a disgrace to me if Kittie failed in rhetoric and Latin. So Kittie was kept right at the kind of life President Roosevelt says so much about, the strenuous one, and when she complained we reminded her how he praised such living. By and by Kittie got so she stopped crying and complaining, and just took her knowledge the way you take medicine—because you have to. But long before that she had spoiled whole chapters of my rhetoric, and the cover too, by crying on them; so I understood what Mabel Blossom meant when she said one day that constitution used to be the dryest study at St. Catharine's, and had now become the wettest.

Thus the weary month passed by, and we hadn't a single good time in it. I was so tired every night that I continued to go to bed at eight o'clock, and Maudie and Mabel and Mabel Muriel slept as long as they dared in the morning because of the late hours they had to keep. Finally examination came.

It was a written examination, and the first subject was rhetoric. We had a morning on that, from nine to twelve, and we were given a list of ten questions to answer, and they covered the whole course we had taken. Kittie James sat just across from me, and, oh, how can I, young and inexperienced as I am, find words to tell the joy and pride that filled my heart when I saw the child writing away for dear life, with a smile of happiness on her sweet lips! I knew she knew every one of the answers, for I did myself, and we had gone over them again and again together. We both finished our papers at eleven o'clock, an hour before the others did, so we handed them in and were excused and went out in the hall and hugged each other hard, and Kittie was real grateful again—the first time she had been for weeks. Then we strolled about the grounds with our arms around each other, and we went all over the questions and our answers (you can, of course, after the papers have been handed in), and we saw that we were all right and sure to pass, so we sang and danced in our girlish joy. When the other girls came out they looked worried, and went right off to study history, which we were to have in the afternoon. They didn't say much to Kittie and me, but we did not mind. We were too happy.

At one o'clock we were in our seats again for the examination in history, and each of us got a slip with ten questions written out. I will admit at once, as I strive to be true to life, that those questions worried me dreadfully. They