Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/39

Rh bad enough for boys to take college examinations, but girls,—just think how much more fun you could have, Julia, if you hadn’t made up your mind to go to College.”

Julia laughed at Brenda’s plaintive expression. “The fun, to-day, begging the pardon of cousin Edward and his  guests, is something that I can miss without feeling that  I am losing much. I ’ll work up to it perhaps in the course of the summer. But really I would rather begin with a row-boat on a mill-pond, if we can find one about here.”

“You are certainly silly,” responded Brenda. “Do come to-day, we may not have the chance soon again. Generally when cousin Edward goes he won’t take girls. He prefers men who can look after themselves.”

But Julia was firm, and in spite of the urging of her aunt and cousin Edward himself, she saw them set off in  the carriages that were to take them all to Marblehead,  while she herself turned back contentedly to her work.

In little more than ten days she was to go to Cambridge to take her first examinations for College—the preliminaries—which are held before so many boys  and girls as a goal which they must not fail to reach  successfully. A year later would come the “finals,” and then in the autumn following Julia hoped to register as a student of Radcliffe College. But everything depended on the examinations, and she knew that she must not  relax her efforts until the last day. In preparing at a private school she was under certain disadvantages. Some time intervened between the closing of school and the  examination, and Julia felt that the daily study by herself