A Sweet Girl Graduate

“I should prefer that you did not in future give letters for me to any of my friends here. I do not wish to receive them through the medium of any of my fellow-students. Please understand this. When you have anything to say to me, you can write in the ordinary course of post. I am not ashamed of any slight correspondence we may have together; but I refuse to countenance, or to be in any sense a party to, what may even seem underhand.

“I shall try to be at the Marshalls’ on Sunday afternoon, but I have nothing to say in reply to your letter. My views are unalterable.

“Yours sincerely, —

“Margaret Oliphant.”

Maggie did not read the letter after she had written it. She put it into an envelope and directed it. Hers was a large and bold hand, and the address was swiftly written —

“Geoffrey Hammond, Esq,

“St. Hilda’s,

“Kingsdene.”

She stamped her letter and, late as it was, took it down herself, and deposited it in the post-bag.

The next morning, when the students strolled in to breakfast, many pairs of eyes were raised with a new curiosity to watch Priscilla Peel. Even Maggie, as she drank her coffee, and munched a piece of dry toast, for she was a very poor eater, could not help flashing a keen and interested glance at the young girl as she came into the room.

Prissie was the reverse of fashionable in her attire; her neat brown cashmere dress had been made by Aunt Raby. The hemming, the stitching, the gathering, the frilling, which went to make up this useful garment were neat, were even exquisite; but then, Aunt Raby was not gifted with a stylish cut. Prissie’s hair was smoothly parted, but the thick plait on the back of the neck was by no means artistically coiled. The girl’s plain pale face was not set off by the severity of her toilet; there was no touch of spring or brightness anywhere, no look or note which should belong to one so young, unless it was the extreme thinness of her figure.

The curious eyes of the students were raised when she appeared, and one or two laughed and turned their heads away. They had heard of her exploit of the night before. Miss Day and Miss Marsh had repeated this good story. It had impressed them at the time, but they did not tell it to others in an impressive way, and the girls, who had not seen Prissie, but had only heard the tale, spoke of her to one another as an “insufferable little prig.”

“Isn’t it too absurd,” said Rosalind Merton, sidling up to Maggie, and casting some disdainful glances at poor Priscilla, “the conceit of some people! Of all forms of conceit, preserve me from the priggish style.”

“I don’t understand you,” said Maggie, raising her eyes and speaking in her lazy voice. “Are there any prigs about? I don’t see them. Oh, Miss Peel,” – she jumped up hastily – “won’t you sit here by me? I have been reserving this place for you, for I have been so anxious to know if you would do me a kindness. Please sit down, and I’ll tell you what it is. You needn’t wait, Rosalind. What I have got to say is only for Miss Peel’s ears.”

Rosalind retired in dudgeon to the other end of the room, and, if the laughing and muttering continued, they now only reached Maggie and Priscilla in the form of very distant murmurs.

“How pale you look,” said Maggie, turning to the girl, “and how cold you are! Yes, I am quite sure you are bitterly cold. Now you shall have a good breakfast. Let me help you. Please, do. I’ll go to the side-table, and bring you something so tempting; wait and see.”

“You mustn’t trouble, really,” began Prissie Miss Oliphant flashed a brilliant smile at her; Prissie found her words arrested, and, in spite of herself, her coldness began to thaw. Maggie ran over to the side-table, and Priscilla kept repeating under her breath —

“She’s not true – she’s beautiful, but she’s false; she has the kindest, sweetest, most comforting way in the world, but she only does it for the sake of an aesthetic pleasure. I ought not to let her. I ought not to speak to her. I ought to go away, and have nothing to do with her proffers of goodwill, and yet somehow or other I can’t resist her.”

Maggie came back with some delicately carved chicken and ham, and a hot cup of delicious coffee.

“Is not this nice?” she said; “now eat it all up, and speak to me afterwards. Oh, how dreadfully cold you do look!”

“I feel cold – in spirit as well as physically,” retorted Priscilla.

“Well, let breakfast warm you – and – and – a small dose of the tonic of sympathy, if I may dare to offer it.”

Priscilla turned her eyes full upon Miss Oliphant.

“Do you mean it?” she said, in a choked kind of voice. “Is that quite true what you said just now?”

“True? What a queer child! Of course it is true. What do you take me for? Why should not I sympathise with you?”

“I want you to,” said Prissie. Tears filled her eyes; she turned her head away. Maggie gave her hand a squeeze.

“Now eat your breakfast,” she said. “I shall glance through my letters while you are busy.”

She leant back in her chair, and opened several envelopes. Priscilla ate her chicken and ham, drank her coffee, and felt the benefit of the double tonic which had been administered in so timely a fashion. It was one of Miss Oliphant’s peculiarities to inspire in those she wanted to fascinate absolute and almost unreasoning faith for the time being. Doubts would and might return in her absence, but in the sunshine of her particularly genial manner they found it hard to live.

After breakfast the girls were leaving the room together, when Miss Heath, the Principal of the Hall in which they resided, came into the room. She was a tall, stately woman of about thirty-five, and had seen very little of Priscilla since her arrival, but now she stopped to give both girls a special greeting. Her manners were very frank and pleasant.

“My dear,” she said to Prissie, “I have been anxious to cultivate your acquaintance. Will you come and have tea with me in my room this afternoon? And, Maggie, dear, will you come with Miss Peel?”

She laid her hand on Maggie’s shoulder as she spoke, looked swiftly into the young girl’s face, then turned with a glance of great interest to Priscilla.

“You will both come,” she said. “That is right. I won’t ask anyone else. We shall have a cosy time together, and Miss Peel can tell me all about her studies, and aims, and ambitions.”

“Thank you,” said Maggie, “I’ll answer for Miss Peel. We’ll both come; we shall be delighted.”

Miss Heath nodded to the pair, and walked swiftly down the long hall to the dons’ special entrance, where she disappeared.

“Is not she charming?” whispered Maggie. “Did I not tell you you would fall in love with Dorothea?”

“But I have not,” said Priscilla, colouring. “And I don’t know whether she is charming or not.”

Maggie checked a petulant exclamation, which was rising to her lips. She was conscious of a curious desire to win her queer young companion’s goodwill and sympathy.

“Never mind,” she said, “the moment of victory is only delayed. You will tell a very different story after you have had tea with Dorothea this evening. Now, let us come and look at the notice-boards, and see what the day’s programme is. By the way, are you going to attend any lectures this morning?”

“Yes, two,” said Prissie – “one on Middle History, from eleven to twelve, and I have a French lecture afterwards.”

“Well, I am not doing anything this morning. I wish you were not. We might have taken a long walk together. Don’t you love long walks?”

“Oh, yes; but there is no time for anything of that sort here – nor – ” Priscilla hesitated. “I don’t think there’s space for a very long walk here,” she added. The colour rushed into her cheeks as she spoke, and her eyes looked wistful.

Maggie laughed.

“What are your ideas with regard to space, Miss Peel? The whole of Kingsdene-shire lies before us. We are untrammelled, and can go where we please. Is not that a sufficiently broad area for our roamings?”

“But there is no sea,” said Priscilla. “We should never have time to walk from here to the sea, and nothing – nothing else seems worth while.”

“Oh, you have lived by the sea?”

“Yes, all my life. When I was a little girl, my home was near Whitby, in Yorkshire, and lately I have lived close to Lyme – two extreme points of England, you will say; but no matter, the sea is the same. To walk for miles on the top of the cliffs, that means exercise.”

“Ah,” said Maggie, with a sigh, “I understand you – I know what you mean.”

She spoke quickly, as she always did under the least touch of excitement. “Such a walk means, more than exercise; it means thought, aspiration. Your brain seems to expand then, and ideas come. Of course you don’t care for poor flat Kingsdene-shire.”

Priscilla turned and stared at Miss Oliphant. Maggie laughed; she raised her hand to her forehead.

“I must not talk any more,” she said, turning pale, and shrinking into herself. “Forgive my rhapsodies. You’ll understand what they are worth when you know me better. Oh, by the way, will you come with me to Kingsdene on Sunday? We can go to the three o’clock service at the chapel, and afterwards have tea with some friends of mine – the Marshalls – they’d be delighted to see you.”