Wellesley College - Legenda Yearbook (Wellesley, MA)

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WELLESLEY COLLEGE LEGENDA. 19 Miss Caldwell made a mental note. In the evening she wrote to Ethel, delicately suggesting a deficit in the treasury, to be met by stringent measures on Friday morning, the time set for examination. She enjoyed writing the note in a serious way, though it gave her a slight return of interest in the out- come that was uncomfortable to carry with her. That was Saturday night. Ethel had gone for a short stay in town, so that she did not get her mail till Tuesday morning rather late. She came up the hill through the mild winter sunshine, walk- ing slowly and studying every word of the note. She was trying to decide whether or not Miss Caldwell thought it really too late to mend — whether Miss Caldwell had been nice to send it — whether her dear project of an extra semester course would have to fall through, — when some one coming down the hill stopped irresolutely in front of her. Ethel looked up. I beg your pardon. You are in sixteen, are you not? Yes, Professor Karnes, your sixteen, you mean. Yes, I am so puzzled. Here is a name, Honoria S. Seyton. Ethel prepared to listen with a keen sense of the humor of the situation. She touched the wire that fenced the walk off from the ground about the Art Building. The cold contact assured her that it was real, this appeal from a faculty, a full Professor, who was puzzled, and was evidently asking for her help. She knew Miss Seyton very well in a general way. The Professor went on slowly: She has handed in her name for an examination conflict between sixteen and twenty-five. I seem to remember the girl in some way, but I can ' t find her name on my books for either course. What does she look like? She is tall, said Ethel, with rather crimpy dark hair. She always looks very solemn. Yes, I know that look you mean. I can ' t understand why I haven ' t her name. Are her eyebrows very straight? Yes, yes indeed. She wears red a great deal too. The Professor was almost unhappy. Sixteen and twenty- five and no record, she murmured.

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18 WELLESLEY COLLEGE LEGENDA. . ters along, one had a right to be amused over a predicament. It would scarcely be too much to say the same thing of Ethel. Work did go into those papers — careful work — if the results did not indicate it. She did take herself too much as a joke. A painstaking attention to form usually ended in an impera- tive change of plan made at the last moment, at the expense of all neatness and comprehensibility. Parentheses were in- sistent. A rapid succession of pens of all kinds wrought no improvement in the quick, ugly, undifferentiated writing. The Professor .usually said something so serious that Ethel neglected possible suggestions in laughing over the huge ab- surdity of the disaster. She had the wholesome merit of never feeling injured. She merrily assumed all the guilt, of which she need have borne only a part. Yet the matter meant something to her, as was natural enough. The college world was approaching one of its semi-annual convulsions. Miss Caldwell was busy bringing the semester ' s work into final shape. She had almost forgotten her students in attention to her courses from an inside point of view. Some time before it had come to her that a timely warning might draw a brilliant examination paper from Ethel, a paper that would atone even in Professor Karnes ' s eyes for past offences. Her intention was recalled to her a few days before the mid- year examinations began. She was walking down the concrete path past the old chapel hill with the Professor as Ethel and Ellen came up the road. There was a lull in the conversation just long enough for the wind to catch a few words of Ellen ' s and drift them to the two women. They were a curt and thor- oughly adverse criticism of a lecture she had apparently just taken. The Professor laughed appreciatively and said, I suppose that ' s the way my girls talk about me. And Miss Caldwell said, I hope not. But both of those girls are yours. They take the three-twenty lecture on Thurs- day. Don ' t you know them? Professor Karnes looked back and shook her head. Their faces were familiar. That ' s as much as I can hope for in a lecture course.

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20 WELLESLEY COLLEGE LEGENDA. ' Terhaps she has had a course, said Ethel very hesitat- ingly. Perhaps she is going to pass off a course. Per — But scarcely two. Besides her face is so familiar that — And then the Professor caught Ethel ' s eye and she saw what Ethel saw. Oh! I — I suppose it may be a — an extra exami- nation. She was so embarrassed that she found difficulty in moving. She apologized confusedly for taking Ethel ' s time, and went on down the hill. So Ilonoria Seyton has one flunk, so possibly she has two. Poor Miss Karnes ! What a break! She won ' t enjoy meeting me soon again. Of course Miss Caldwell understood the Honoria Seyton conflict at sight, so the Professor did not reveal the unwitting breach of faith she had been guilty of. She did not even know the name of the girl she had met, and she endured moments of real anguish when she pictured the incident sift- ing back to her as a rare bit of college gossip, with her name attached, with the name of the girl whose affairs she had opened to the public. She bemoaned her stupidity. She wrote meaningless hieroglyphs on her blotter, as it came back to her again and again. She almost hoped the girl would scorn her loftily for her slowness, and find it too ridiculous to tell. Professor Karnes might have been indifferent to her slip, but she knew well enough that the college code made such a matter the secret of one girl. That girl could and often would speak of it, but it was the unpardonable sin for another to do so, and that other a member of a faculty. She was ashamed and painfully chagrined. Meanwhile the examinations passed. Miss Caldwell had the bad taste to fall suddenly ill, when she had not yet fin- ished her blue-books, and they devolved on Professor Karnes to judge. She waited for some time, hoping that Miss Cald- well would be able to get her own reports out, but it became clear that it would be a number of weeks before that could happen. She was rather well pleased with the work and grew decidedly philanthropic in mood, so that when Ethel Ashley ' s