The following day an astounding thing came to pass. The president of
the college and the dean of the musical faculty called on Miss Trench.
They wanted to offer her a position in the conservatory. Naturally
it could not be an actual professorship. A seventeen-year-old girl
... without a degree. They thought she might give recitals in the
neighbouring towns, and take pupils in advanced technique. It would
mean much to the college to announce an instructor who had studied
with the great Ysaye. No one need know how young she was. Indeed she
was altogether different from the immature girl they remembered--quite
dignified and impressive. Marvellously changed.
“If they knew what changed her,” Mrs. Trench reflected, her gorge
rising, “they wouldn’t be flattering her this way.” It was a mistake
to tell that about the King of Belgium. She hadn’t thought about the
effect on Eileen. Of late she blundered at every turn. Somehow things
were slipping out of her grasp.
After they had gone, Eileen ran breathless to Vine Cottage to tell
Judith. She could not contemplate any step without that guidance or
approval.
“Lary will be pleased. This will put an end to your mother’s plan of
having you enter the freshman class next Monday. But ... Eileen, I have
an idea. You are not going to stop studying. I wonder if you and I
couldn’t--I’m a horribly uneducated person.”
“With Lary for tutor, you mean? Well, in the first place, my brother’s
no salesman when it comes to the things he knows. He can lay them out
on the counter and let you pick what you want. What I want most is
Latin. And he thinks it is bald and plebeian, compared with Greek. Syd
reads Horace, in the original, to rest him when he’s tired and can’t
get his mind off of the sick babies and their fool mothers. I’m crazy
to translate Ovid and--”
“Syd’s just the thing. Don’t tell Lary, but I foundered on the Greek
alphabet. It simply wouldn’t stick in my memory. I substituted organic
chemistry. My classicist husband would be disgusted.”
“Lary’s a prig--and I love him! Judith, it was worth it--just to get
acquainted with my brother.”