Miss Atterbury put the paper she was reading carefully and slowly down
upon the table. It was the _Boston ---- _, and there was a long article
upon the first page marked ostentatiously around with a blue
lead-pencil, and headed in glaring letters, “Athletics in Girls’
Colleges.”
There was a dangerous gleam in Miss Atterbury’s dark-gray eyes, and she
seemed a trifle more than her ordinary five feet eight inches as she
drew herself up and turned, with that careful repression of irritation
which always denotes the extreme limit of self-control, upon an
inoffensive freshman, comfortably installed in the window-seat, playing
a mandolin.
“I was in Antwerp two weeks last summer,” she remarked, with careful
emphasis, “and I heard the cathedral chimes play ‘La Mandolinata’ twice
every five minutes, I think. I would be obliged if you would play
something else, or even stop altogether for a while--I have something
important to talk about just now.”
The freshman stuck her pick guiltily in the strings, and shifted her
position upon the cushions into one of extreme and flattering attention,
while the four girls who had been playing whist over in a corner turned
hastily around toward Miss Atterbury.
“What is it now, Katharine?” inquired Miss Yale, reproachfully, laying
down her cards. “She always takes things so terribly _au grand
sérieux_,” she explained plaintively to the rest. Miss Yale had her
rooms with Miss Atterbury, and stood rather in awe of that young woman,
and was very proud of her athletic prowess, and could always be relied
upon to tell her friends “that Katharine Atterbury was the captain of
the senior crew, and could pull an oar as well as a ’Varsity stroke, and
that the champion tennis-player of a certain year had said that she was
an antagonist to be feared and respected.”
“_This_ is what is the matter,” said Miss Atterbury, in a tragic voice,
picking up the paper. “I don’t know who it is that writes such absurd,
such wilfully misleading articles about us, but I do know that if I
could get at him I would----”
What Miss Atterbury would do was apparently too awful to speak of just
then.
One of the girls got up and went over to her.
“But what is it?--what have they said about us now?” she inquired,
impatiently.
“What they are always doing--poking fun at us,” replied Miss Atterbury,
hotly, and with a fine disregard of grammar. “To read this article one
would imagine that we were imbecile babies. One would think that a girl
was as weak as a kitten, and didn’t know a boat from an elevator, or a
five-lap running track from an ice-wagon, or a golf club from a
sewing-machine. He--whoever the man is who wrote this ridiculous
article--seems to think that all our training and physical development
is a huge joke. He don’t even know how stupid he is. That’s the worst of
it--he isn’t even aware of his unutterable, his colossal ignorance!”
“Wouldn’t it be fun to have him drawn and quartered, as an awful
example, a sort of warning to the other newspaper men not to write about
what they are totally ignorant of, and to leave us alone,” suggested the
inoffensive little freshman, with a base but entirely successful attempt
to get back into Miss Atterbury’s good graces.
The senior gave her a brief but cordial glance, and then ran on:
“Something must be done about it. I’m tired of reading this sort of
trash about women’s colleges. It is time the public was learning the
true state of things--that girls can and do swim, and row and play golf
and tennis, and run and walk about, just as their brothers do, and that
we have courage and muscle enough to go in for football even, except
that we have some _little_ regard for our personal appearance!”
“And it’s so degrading and irritating to go home in the vacations, and
have one’s brother tease one to death about it all, and try to be funny,
and ask one if the color of one’s gymnasium suit is becoming, and if the
golf captain knows the caddie from a cleek,” interposed Miss Thayer, a
pretty blond girl who got up slowly and sauntered over to Miss
Atterbury, putting her face over that young lady’s shoulder to get a
look at the unfortunate paper. As she did so she gave a little cry of
surprise.
“Why, I know the man who wrote that,” she gasped. “There! J. E. N.--see
those initials at the end?--they mean Jack Newbold. I remember now he is
writing for that paper. He told me this summer at the sea-shore that he
was going in for newspaper work. His grandfather owns this paper, you
know, and has promised him half a million when he is twenty-five if he
will go through the whole thing--learn everything a newspaper man must
know. He didn’t want to do it much, but, of course, he would go in for
almost anything sooner than lose all that pile of money.”
Miss Atterbury looked thoughtfully and intently at Miss Thayer.
“You say he is a friend of yours?” she demanded, slowly.
“Oh, yes; we got to be very good friends this summer. He taught me how
to play fifteen-ball pool--that’s about all he knows,” went on the girl,
scornfully. “He’s an awful duffer about everything else. You ought to
see him play tennis! It’s not very edifying, but it’s awfully funny.”
Miss Atterbury gave a little gasp of delight.
“That’s too good to be true,” she said, enthusiastically.
Miss Thayer rather stared. “Why?” she demanded, and then, without
waiting for a reply, she swept on. “You wouldn’t think so if you had to
play doubles with him! And he simply can’t walk--gets awfully tired, he
says. _I_ think it’s his clothes. Gets ’em in London, and they are
terribly swell and uncomfortable. And he is always afraid his collar is
going to melt; it’s quite painful to be with him on a warm day. And I
couldn’t induce him to come out in my cat-boat with me. Said he didn’t
think a girl could learn to handle one with any degree of safety. Did
you ever hear of anything so unjust? I think he was _afraid_.”
Miss Atterbury was leaning on the table now, and her countenance had
assumed such a cheerful look that the freshman felt quite relieved and
ventured to pick up her mandolin again.
“Go on!” demanded the senior, delightedly.
“Well, I don’t know anything more,” declared Miss Thayer, impatiently.
“Isn’t that enough for you? He’s no good at out-door sports, and what he
is doing writing us up or down is more than I can imagine. He oughtn’t
to be allowed to do so. He don’t know anything about it at all, and I
should think he would be ashamed of himself. I suppose his editor told
him to do it, and he simply ‘made up’ and put down everything he had
ever heard about us, and worked in all the old jokes about girls’
colleges.”
Miss Atterbury got up slowly.
“Well!” she said, impressively, to Miss Thayer, “I’m sorry if that young
man is much of a friend of yours, for we have got to make an example of
him. I suppose you know him well enough to invite him out here Monday
afternoon?--for you’ve got to do it,” she added, with calm decision.
Miss Thayer said she thought she might venture on that simple act of
courtesy, though she could not quite understand why Miss Atterbury was
so anxious to see him since she disapproved of him so entirely; to which
that young woman replied that she wished to see him once, so that she
might never see him again, and that the next day she would explain her
plans, in which she expected their hearty co-operation.
* * * * *
Mr. Jack Newbold had just comfortably installed himself in the 1.50 B.
and A. train, when it occurred to him that he might possibly have made a
mistake as to the time Miss Thayer expected him. He pulled out the note
which he had received from her, and read it again.
“MY DEAR MR. NEWBOLD: I have been so interested in what you have
written about athletics in girls’ colleges! I saw the article in
your paper and knew immediately by the initials that it was your
work. Ever since seeing it I have been wishing to redeem my promise
to have you come out here and see our college.
“All the girls are anxious to see you. I hope you won’t mind
receiving a great deal of attention! You know how enthusiastic and
unconventional college girls are, and you are of the greatest
interest to us just now. Miss Atterbury, a charming girl, is
especially eager to meet you. Don’t be _too_ flattered! But we
shall all be delighted to see the man who has so ably written up
girls’ colleges, and unless I hear from you to the contrary, shall
look for you out Monday afternoon by the 1.50 train.
“Of course I shall expect you to take dinner and go to the concert
in the evening. I tell you this now, so you can wear just the right
‘dress’--men are so ridiculously particular about their clothes!
“Very cordially yours,
“ELEANOR THAYER.”
Mr. Jack Newbold was not a particularly vain youth, but he had a slight
feeling of satisfaction on perusing that note which made him settle
himself even more comfortably in his seat and resign himself cheerfully
to the short journey.
“Had no idea that article would make such a sensation,” he was saying to
himself, “and I’m glad she expects me by this train. Of course she will
bring her trap to the station for me. I believe the college is quite a
little distance from the town. Nice little trap--she drives well for a
girl, I remember.” And then he fell to wondering whether he had selected
just the right things to wear. “Girls are so deucedly critical,” he
soliloquized, and it had been rather hard to decide on just what would
be in good taste for an afternoon call and would still do without change
for the concert in the evening, and he rather complimented himself on
his judicious selection, and was assuring himself that the particular
shade of his gloves had not been a mistake, when he found that he was at
the station.
Miss Thayer welcomed him effusively.
“I knew you wouldn’t have the vaguest idea of how to get up to the
college,” she was saying, “and so I came down for you myself. No, I
didn’t bring my trap. I knew you would enjoy the walk up, and I wanted
to show you it myself. I remember how fond you were of walking, last
summer,” she added, with a bright smile at him.
Newbold stared a little.
“I don’t think,” he began doubtfully; but Miss Thayer interrupted him
quickly--
“You cannot imagine how anxious the girls are to see you. Each one wants
to show you what she is particularly interested in. Really you are quite
a martyr--I mean a hero--in our eyes! We will go up this way,” she ran
on. “It’s a little longer and there is a pretty bad hill, but of course
a man doesn’t mind a little extra exertion, and it’s even more beautiful
than the other way.”
Newbold said he would be charmed to go any way that Miss Thayer might
choose, but that he didn’t want to lose any of his visit at the college,
and that perhaps it would be wiser to take the short cut. But Miss
Thayer said that if they walked a little faster they would get there
just as soon, and he would see the finer view, too. So they started off
briskly, and Newbold wished that he had worn the other pair of patent
leathers, and finally, when he felt ready to drop, and thought they must
have walked about five miles, and she told him they had only two more to
go, he blamed himself most severely for not having firmly refused
anything but the short cut and a cab. One of Miss Thayer’s friends who
met her told her the next day that she was glad to see that she had
joined the Pedestrian Club, and that she had often wondered why she had
not done so before.
“I hardly think it is worth while to go into the drawing-room now,”
remarked Miss Thayer, argumentatively, as they strolled up the broad
drive to the college. “I see Miss Atterbury down there on the campus
playing tennis, and I promised to bring you to her immediately,” she
went on. Newbold felt a horrible inclination to say that he didn’t care
if he never met Miss Atterbury, and that personally he would very
[Illustration: “YOU CANNOT IMAGINE HOW ANXIOUS THE GIRLS ARE TO SEE
YOU”]
much prefer going into the drawing-room and stopping there for the rest
of the afternoon, in the most comfortable chair to be found; but he
managed to murmur a weary assent to Miss Thayer’s proposition, and
together they started down the steep hill at the bottom of which
stretched the campus. But he could not seem to keep up with Miss Thayer,
and by the time he had reached the tennis grounds and had decided that
in all probability his heart would never beat normally again, he was
conscious that he was bowing, and that Miss Atterbury, flushed from
playing, was standing before him and was laughing and saying--“I don’t
often give acquaintances such a warm welcome!” The next thing he knew
was that someone had thrust a racket into his hand, and he heard, as in
a dream, Miss Thayer telling her friend that Mr. Newbold was a splendid
tennis-player, and that she would have to do her best to beat him, but
that she hoped she would for the honor of the college. And then he found
himself, somehow, walking over to the court, and, before he could
protest, Miss Atterbury was on the other side, and was asking him kindly
but briskly if he were ready to play. He thought he was as near ready as
he ever would be, so he said “Play!” and waited resignedly for her
serve.
It was just after Miss Atterbury had piled up an appalling number of
games against him, and he had come to the conclusion that he knew what
it would be like to stand fire from a Krupp gun, and had decided that
tight patent leathers and a long coat were not just what he would have
chosen to play tennis in, that he saw Miss Atterbury, to his intense
relief, throw down her racket and run up the hill a little way. She was
back in an instant with Miss Thayer and a tall, handsome girl, carrying
a lot of golf clubs. When young Newbold saw the golf clubs he felt so
tired that he thought he would sit down on the cold ground, although he
knew how dangerous such a proceeding was, especially when he was so
painfully aware of how hot his head was and how clammy his linen felt.
“Mr. Newbold!” he heard Miss Atterbury say, “I want to present you to
Miss Yale. She is the captain of the Golf Club, and I knew you would
want to meet her. Anyone who is such an authority on the subject as you
proved yourself to be in that article would, of course, want to see the
links out here.”
“Ah! thank you!” murmured Newbold; “but I play very little, you know,
and I wouldn’t interrupt your game for the world!”