Read Ebook: Brenda's Cousin at Radcliffe: A Story for Girls by Reed Helen Leah Stephens Alice Barber Illustrator

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Ebook has 1578 lines and 86057 words, and 32 pages

"Yes, at my boarding-house we are very plebeian. At one o'clock we have dinner, not luncheon, while you, I dare say, have dinner at half-past six."

"Of course," replied Julia, while Clarissa, echoing "of course," added, "Then you must be a regular swell. But I thought that I'd feel better to find a boarding-place in Cambridge, where their manners and customs are like ours at home."

Not to leave Pamela out of the conversation, Julia asked her if she had found a boarding-place, and Pamela replied that she had not yet decided on a house. She might have added that all the rooms that thus far she had seen were beyond her slender purse. Before they reached Julia's door, Pamela bade the others good-bye.

"She's almost too good, isn't she?" was Clarissa's comment as Pamela disappeared in the distance.

"I like her," returned Julia, begging the question.

"Oh, so do I; with that neat little figure, and those melancholy gray eyes, she is my very idea of a Puritan maiden. You are something like one yourself," she concluded, "and I hope that you'll let me call on you occasionally."

"Why, of course, and I will call on you, too, if I may."

Thus with the feeling that each had made a friend, the two Freshmen parted, both looking forward with interest to the college year.

Julia went to Rockley that same Tuesday afternoon, and was warmly welcomed by Brenda at the station. The younger girl, it is true, teased her cousin about being a Freshman, yet at the same time she showed so much affection, despite her teasing, that she hardly seemed the same Brenda who not long before had found in every act of Julia's some cause for dissatisfaction.

Rockley was the summer place of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Barlow, the uncle and aunt with whom, for two years, Julia Bourne had made her home. It was on the seashore, little more than twenty miles from Boston, and Julia had passed two happy vacations there. She had gone to live with her uncle and aunt soon after her father's death, and had completed her preparation for college at Miss Crawdon's school, the same school that Brenda and her intimate friends attended. Brenda, Edith, Nora, and Belle were inseparables, while Julia had been more intimate with Ruth Roberts, the Roxbury girl who was now her room-mate at Cambridge.

The Barlows were to stay at Rockley until late October, and Mrs. Barlow regretted that Julia must spend that beautiful autumn month in Cambridge. She remarked at dinner that Julia looked pale, and said that she and Brenda had decided that this resulted from examinations.

"It pleases me," Mr. Barlow had interposed, "that you and your friends should get even this indirect advantage from Radcliffe. In time the average private schoolgirl may have an equal chance with boys."

"Why, papa, you never have wished me to go to college."

"No, my dear, but I often have thought that you suffered at school--"

"My idea of suffering probably differs from yours. I mean that you suffer from a lack of thoroughness. Thoroughness is the first essential of college preparation."

"Why, papa, girls can fit for college at Miss Crawdon's. Julia and Ruth and several others prepared for the examinations. But let us change the subject," said Brenda, adding, "What are those Radcliffe girls like? Are they very queer?"

"Why, no indeed," replied Julia loyally. Yet even as she spoke she had a vision of Pamela and Clarissa, to whom Brenda might apply her adjective, although to each in a different way.

"After all," interposed Mr. Barlow, "thirty-five years ago who would have imagined girls in college? Why, even twenty years ago a man would have been thought foolish to prophesy that within his lifetime girls would be admitted to full Harvard privileges."

"Oh, but papa, it isn't really the same as Harvard. The boys say that it is quite different."

"Then it's a difference without much distinction. Professor Dummer the other day told me that Harvard and Radcliffe students have identical examinations in all subjects, as well as the same courses of study. But I will grant that in athletics and that kind of thing they haven't the same chance as Harvard boys."

At this moment the long glass door was pushed open, and Philip stood within the room. The whole family greeted him heartily, for they had not seen him since his return from Europe. He told them that his mother and Edith had decided to stay a month longer abroad, and that he was spending a day or two on his yacht in Marblehead Harbor.

"On Thursday I must be in Cambridge, and after that the 'Balloon' goes out of commission for the season."

The young people soon went out on the piazza, where they made themselves comfortable with cushions and wraps.

"It's a great thing to be young," said Mr. Barlow, as their laughter rippled through the open window. Two girls from a neighboring cottage had joined them, and with them was their brother, also a Harvard undergraduate. They had more in common with Brenda than with Julia, and thus the latter was free to answer Philip's many questions about Radcliffe.

Although two or three years Julia's senior, Philip had of late acquired the habit of turning to her for advice. To himself he admitted that her level-headedness had more than once saved him from making a fool of himself. Philip Blair had just escaped being spoiled after the fashion of most only sons with plenty of money. His parents had always been so ready to consider his wishes that he had come to think the quick gratification of his tastes a necessity. Because he was good-looking and had agreeable manners, older men and women were apt to flatter him, and his schoolmates fed his vanity in their eagerness for his friendship. Without being really weak, Philip was easily influenced; and though in school he never had been in disgrace, more than once he had been near suspension from college. A certain indolence made it hard to shake off his undesirable associates. But even the slow-thinking Edith had discovered that Philip had a real regard for Julia's opinion.

"Mamma and I are very glad that Philip likes to talk to a sensible girl like Julia, for we were afraid that his head might be turned, with so many silly girls always running after him." Philip's college friends--those whom he asked to dine with him sometimes, or took to call on Edith's friends--were afraid of Julia.

Hearing that she was fitted for college, they could not understand how Philip had the courage to talk with her, or even to dance with her. They supposed that he was polite to her simply because she was a friend of Edith's. "Not that she isn't a nice-looking girl, but she must be frightfully strong-minded to think of going to college."

Knowing the Harvard sentiment toward Radcliffe, therefore, Julia was prepared for more or less teasing from Philip, and yet as she bade him good-bye she was pleased to be able to remind him that he had said hardly a thing to discourage her about her college career.

II THE FRESHMAN RECEPTION

When Julia approached Fay House on Thursday, the opening of the term, there were girls on the steps, girls in the halls, girls besieging the Secretary's office with questions; old students stood about discussing all kinds of things, from their summer experiences to their proposed courses of study. But the Freshmen were less often in groups. In single file they waited their turn at the office, or sat in the conversation room, catching scraps of wisdom from the lips of the older girls who passed by.

"Oh, last year I had five and a half courses, but I've promised papa to be more sensible and limit myself to four, so as to have some time for other things."

This from a serious-looking girl, and then from another more frivolous, "Well, I tried to forget everything this summer, except how to have a good time. It was delightful not to have even a theme or a forensic on my mind. I was a walking encyclopedia last June, but now I feel absolutely empty-headed."

"What in the world," came from another group, "possessed you to take Pol. Econ. this year? I thought you were trying for honors in classics."

"So I am," in a rather melancholy tone; "but I'm tired of having nothing but Greek and Latin. My future bread and butter may depend on them, as I'm to be a teacher of the classics, but I'm indulging in Pol. Econ. as a luxury."

"A luxury! Well, you'll pay for it."

Julia, seated at the reading table, was not only amused by these bits of conversation, but was interested in watching the passing girls.

"Isn't it great?" cried Ruth, joining her. "It's a little like the first day at school, and yet it's different. Who is that queer-looking girl, she's actually bowing to you," with an intonation of disapproval; "why, you don't know her, do you?"

"Yes, I met her yesterday. She's a Freshman from the West."

"Have you chosen your electives yet?" asked Julia, after a minute or two. "Aren't they bewildering?"

"It isn't the elective, I've been told," responded Clarissa, "but the man who gives them that makes the difference. The younger the instructor, the worse his marks. He thinks that he shows his own importance by making 'A' and 'B' marks few and far between. I'm going in for all the starred courses I can get, for then there'll be more chance of my having real professors to teach me."

Ruth hurried Julia away from Clarissa to an appointment with a history professor. He had wished to talk with them before consenting to their entering his class. He was pleased to find them so interested, adding, as he gave his consent:

"You must be prepared for hard work, as Freshmen are rarely permitted to take this course. I hope that you read Latin at sight, for you may have to make researches in some old books."

Then he bowed and left them, and Ruth looked at Julia, and the latter, understanding the question that Ruth would ask, replied, "Of course I'll help you;" while Ruth, whose Latin was weaker than Julia's, responded, "You always were a dear."

Julia and Ruth had arranged to board in the same house, having separate bedrooms, but sharing a large study. This was a square, corner room, with three windows. One looked down on a bit of old-fashioned garden, and the other two gave a view of some of the stately houses on Brattle Street. Their landlady, or hostess, as she liked to be called, was the widow of a Harvard instructor, who, besides a widow and two children, had left a slim little book on the Greek accusative. Mrs. Colton always had the book in plain sight on her library table, and she believed that had her husband lived he would have been one of the most distinguished of the faculty. She had long refused to open her house to Annex, or Radcliffe, students. Like many other conservative people, she did not approve of the presence of women students in Cambridge, and she did not care to encourage the new woman's college by taking its students to board. But when the new Harvard dormitories made it harder for her to get the right kind of students to take her rooms, she began to think about the possibilities of Radcliffe. When she happened to hear that Mrs. Robert Barlow was looking for a home for her niece, she immediately sent word that she would be very glad to have her consider her rooms. She saw that it would give her house prestige to have Julia and Ruth her first Radcliffe boarders. Mrs. Barlow and the girls were well pleased with the rooms, especially as Mrs. Colton was to take no other boarders.

Ruth and Julia would hardly have been girls, however, had they been perfectly satisfied with the arrangement of the furniture as planned by Mrs. Colton and Mrs. Barlow. With the exception of a few pictures, the study was supposed to be in perfect order on that first Thursday of the term. But Julia, when they went upstairs after luncheon, decided that the divan must be moved from the windows to the corner opposite the fireplace, and Ruth suggested that the library table should go from the centre to a recess near the mantle-piece. Chairs ranged stiffly against the wall they pulled out into more inviting positions, and moved many other things. They both agreed that several pictures must be rehung, and Ruth began to jump about from mantle-piece to table to make the changes.

"Oh, do be careful!" cried Julia, as Ruth stepped from a chair to the table, with a framed Braun photograph under her arm, and a half-dozen picture nails in her hand. "Do wait," she added, "until we can find some one."

"Wait for whom? We can't call the chambermaid, and Mrs. Colton would be of no more use than--well, than you, Julia. Besides, I've hung more pictures than you could count; and--why, what's that?" she concluded, as a very loud knocking at the door sounded through the rooms. Forgetting the picture under her arm, as she turned she let it fall with a crash to the floor.

"Gracious!" cried Master Percival Colton, astonished at the sight of one Radcliffe girl standing on a narrow mantle-piece with another sitting on the floor picking up fragments of broken glass.

"I hope nothing's hurt," said Percival politely, though hardly concealing his curiosity as he handed Julia two letters. Then he turned away rather sadly, as the girls neither explained what had happened nor what they intended to do about it.

"Come down, Ruth," cried Julia, as Percy disappeared. "Clarissa Herter, that Kansas girl, has sent her card with these letters that she found on the bulletin board. She thought that we might like to have them. Oh, they're invitations!" she added, as she opened her envelope.

"The Senior, Junior, and Sophomore classes at home in the Auditorium, Saturday, September 30. 4 to 6."

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