An Entrance Examination
The Seaton High School was a large, handsome brick building exactly
opposite the public park. It had only been erected two years ago, so
everything about it was absolutely new and up-to-date. It supplied a
great need in the rapidly growing city, and indeed offered the best and
most go-ahead education to be obtained in the district.
It was the aim of the school to fit girls for various professions and
careers; there was a classical and a modern side, a department for
domestic economy, and a commercial class for instruction in business
details. Art, music, and nature study were well catered for, and manual
training was not forgotten. As the school was intended to become in time
a center for the county, the Governors had offered two open free
scholarships to be competed for by girls resident in other parts of
Rytonshire, hoping by this means to attract pupils from the country
places round about.
On the morning of September 8th, precisely at 8.35, Winona presented
herself at the school for the scholarship examination. There were twenty
other candidates awaiting the ordeal, in various stages of nervousness
or sangfroid. Some looked dejected, some confident, and others hid their
feelings under a mask of stolidity. Winona joined them shyly. They were
all unknown to one another, and so far nobody had plucked up courage to
venture a remark. It is horribly depressing to sit on a form staring at
twenty taciturn strangers. Winona bore for awhile with the stony
silence, then--rather frightened at the sound of her own voice--she
announced:
"I suppose we're all going in for this same exam.!" It was a trite
commonplace, but it broke the ice. Everybody looked relieved. The
atmosphere seemed to clear.
"Yes, we're all going in--that's right enough," replied a ruddy-haired
girl in spectacles, "but there are only two scholarships, so nineteen of
us are bound to fail--that's logic and mathematics and all the rest of
it."
"Whew! A nice cheering prospect. Wish they'd put us out of our misery at
once!" groaned a stout girl with a long fair pigtail.
"I'm all upset!" shivered another.
"It's like a game of musical chairs," suggested a fourth. "We're all
scrambling for the same thing, and some are bound to be out of it."
The ruddy-haired girl laughed nervously.
"Suppose we've got to take our sporting luck!" she murmured.
"If nineteen are sure to lose, two are sure to win at any rate," said
Winona. "That's logic and mathematics and all the rest of it, too!"
"Right you are! That's a more cheering creed! It doesn't do to cry
'Miserere me' too soon!" chirped a jolly-looking dark-eyed girl with a
red hair-ribbon. "'Never say die till you're dead,' is my motto!"
"I'm wearing a swastika for a mascot," said a short, pale girl,
exhibiting her charm, which hung from a chain round her neck. "I never
am lucky, so I thought I'd try what this would do for me for once. I
know English history beautifully down to the end of Queen Anne, and no
further, and if they set any questions on the Georges I'll be stumped."
"I've learnt Africa, but Asia would floor me!" observed another, looking
up from a geography book, in which she was making a last desperate
clutch at likely items of knowledge. "I never can remember which side of
India Madras is on; I get it hopelessly mixed with Bombay."
"I wish to goodness they'd go ahead and begin," mourned the owner of the
red hair-ribbon. "It's this waiting that knocks the spirit out of me.
Patience isn't my pet virtue. I call it cruelty to animals to leave us
on tenter-hooks."
Almost as if in answer to her pathetic appeal the door opened, and a
teacher appeared. In a brisk, business-like manner she marshaled the
candidates into line, and conducted them to the door of the
head-mistress' study, where one by one they were admitted for a brief
private interview. Winona's turn came about the middle of the row.
"Pass in: as quickly as you can, please!" commanded the teacher,
motioning her onward.
As Winona entered, she gave one hasty comprehensive glance round the
room, taking in a general impression of books, busts and pictures, then
focussed her attention on the figure that sat at the desk. It was only
at a later date that she grasped any details of Miss Bishop's
personality; at that first meeting she realized nothing but the pair of
compelling blue eyes that drew her forward like a magnet.
"Your name?"
"Winona Woodward."
"Age?"
"Fifteen."
"Residence?"
"Highfield, Ashbourne, near Great Marston."
"How long have you lived in the county of Rytonshire?"
"Ever since I was born."
Miss Bishop hastily ticked off these replies on a page of her ledger,
and handed Winona a card.
"This will admit you to the examination room. Remember that instead of
putting your name at the head of your papers, you are to write the
number given you on your card. Any candidate writing her own name will
be disqualified. Next girl!"
It was all over in two minutes. Winona seemed hardly to have entered the
room before she was out again.
"Move on, please!" said the teacher, marshaling the little crowd round
the door. "Will those who have seen Miss Bishop kindly go along the
corridor."
Several girls who had been standing in a knot made a sudden bolt, and
pushed their fellows forward. Somebody jogged Winona's elbow. Her card
slid from her grasp and fell on to the ground. As she bent in the crush
to pick it up, the ruddy-haired girl stooped on a like errand.
"Dropped mine too! Clumsy, isn't it?" she laughed. "Hope we've got our
own! What was your number?"
"I hadn't time to look."
"Well, I'm sure mine was eleven, so that's all right. I wish you luck!
Won't we just be glad when it's over, rather!"
At the further end of the corridor was a door with a notice pinned on to
it. "Examination for County Scholarships." A mistress stood there, and
scrutinized each girl's card as she entered, directing her to a seat in
the room marked with the corresponding number. Winona walked rather
solemnly to the desk labeled 10. The great ordeal was at last about to
begin. She wondered what would be the end of it. Little thrills of
nervousness seemed running down her back like drops from a shower-bath.
Her hands were trembling. With a great effort she pulled herself
together.
"It's no use funking!" she thought. "I'll make as good a shot as I can
at things, and if I fail--well, I shall have plenty of companions in
misfortune, at any rate!"
A pile of foolscap paper with red-ruled margins, a clean sheet of white
blotting paper, and a penholder with a new nib lay ready. Each of the
other twenty victims was surveying a supply of similar material. On the
blackboard was chalked the word "Silence."
In a dead hush the candidates sat and waited. Exactly on the stroke of
nine Miss Bishop entered and handed a sheaf of printed questions to the
teacher in charge, who distributed them round the room. The subject for
the first hour was arithmetic. Winona read over her paper slowly. She
felt capable of managing it, all except the last two problem sums, which
were outside her experience. She knew it would mainly be a question of
accuracy.
"I'll work them each twice if I've only time," she thought, starting at
number one.
An hour is after all only made up of sixty minutes, and these seemed to
fly with incredible rapidity. The teacher on the platform had sternly
reproved a girl guilty of counting aloud in an agitated whisper,
threatening instant expulsion for a repetition of such an offense, but
with this solitary exception nobody transgressed the rules. All sat
quietly absorbed in their work, and an occasional rustle of paper or
scratch of a pen were the only sounds audible. At precisely five minutes
to ten the deity on the platform sounded a bell, and ordered papers to
be put together. She collected them, handed them to another mistress,
then without any break proceeded to deal out the questions for the next
hour's examination. This was in geography, and here Winona was not on
such sure ground. Granted that you are acquainted with certain rules in
arithmetic, it is always possible to work out problems, but it needed
more knowledge than she possessed to write answers to the riddles that
confronted her. She had never heard of "The Iron Gates," could not place
Alcona and Altona, was hazy as to the whereabouts of the Mourne
Mountains, and utterly unable to draw an accurate map of the Balkan
States. She scored a little on Canada, for she had learnt North America
last term at Miss Harmon's, but with Australia and New Zealand she was
imperfectly acquainted. She wrote away, getting hotter and hotter as she
realized her deficiencies, winding up five minutes before the time
allotted, in a flushed and decidedly inky condition.
At eleven a short interval was allowed, and the candidates thankfully
adjourned. Outside in the corridor they compared notes.
"Well, of all detestable papers this geography one is the limit!"
declared an aggrieved voice.
It was the girl who had said that she always mixed Madras and Bombay,
and who had studied her text-book up to the last available moment.
Apparently her eleventh hour industry had not sufficed to tide her over
her difficulties.
"It was catchy in parts," agreed the owner of the swastika, "but I liked
one or two questions. I just happened to know them, so I bowled ahead.
That's what comes of wearing a mascot!"
"Don't crow too soon!" laughed the girl with the fair pigtail.
"Remember, there are four other exams. to follow. Your luck may leave
you at any moment."
"Don't mention more exams.! I feel inclined to turn tail and run home!"
declared another.
"There's the bell! Don't give us much time, do they? Now for the torture
chamber again! Brace your nerves!"
"I wonder if most of them have done better or worse than I have!"
thought Winona, as she took her seat once more at No. 10 desk. "A good
many were grumbling, but that sandy-haired girl in the spectacles said
nothing. No more did the one with the red hair-ribbon. Of course they
might be feeling too agonized for words, but on the other hand they
might be secretly congratulating themselves."
It was not the moment, however, for speculation as to her neighbors'
progress. The next set of questions was being distributed, and she took
up her copy eagerly. Her heart fell as she read it over. Her knowledge
of English history was not very accurate, and the facts demanded were
for the most part exactly those which she could not remember. The dread
of failure loomed up large. She could only attempt about half of the
questions, and even in these she was not ready with dates. Then suddenly
Percy's advice flashed into her mind. "Write from a romantic standpoint,
and make your paper sound poetical." It seemed rather a forlorn hope,
and she feared it would scarcely satisfy her examiners, but in such a
desperate situation anything was worth trying. Winona possessed a
certain facility in essay writing. Prose composition had been her
favorite lesson at Miss Harmon's. She collected her wits now, and did
the very utmost of which she was capable in the matter of style.
Choosing question No. 4, "Write a life of Lady Jane Grey," she proceeded
to treat the subject in as post-impressionist a manner as possible. The
pathetic tragedy of the young Queen had always appealed to her
imagination, and she could have had no more congenial a theme upon which
to write, if she had been given free choice of all the characters in the
history book.
"'Whom the gods love die young,'" she began, and paused. It seemed an
excellent opening, if she could only continue in the same strain, but
what ought to come next? Her thoughts flew to a painting of Lady Jane
Grey, which she had once seen at a loan collection of Tudor portraits.
Why should she not describe it? Her pen flew rapidly as she wrote a
word-picture of the sweet, pale face, so round and childish in spite of
its earnest expression; the smooth yellow hair, the gray eyes bent
demurely over the book. Her heroine seemed beginning to live. Now for
her surroundings. A year ago Winona had paid a visit to Hampton Court,
and her remembrance of its associations was still keen and vivid. She
described its old-world garden by the side of the Thames, where the
little King Edward VI. must often have roamed with his pretty cousin
Jane: the two wonderful ill-starred children, playing for a brief hour
in happy unconsciousness of the fate that faced them. What did they talk
about, she asked, as they stood on the paved terrace and watched the
river hurrying by? Plato, perchance, and his philosophy, or the
marvelous geography-book with woodcuts of foreign beasts that had been
specially printed for the young king's use. Did they compare notes about
their tutors? Jane would certainly hold a brief for her much-loved Mr.
Elmer, who, in sharp contrast to her parents' severity, taught her so
gently and patiently that she grudged the time which was not spent in
his presence. Edward might bemoan the ill-luck of his whipping-boy, who
had to bear the floggings which Court etiquette denied to the royal
shoulders, and perhaps would declare that when he was grown up, and
could make the laws himself, no children should be beaten for badly said
lessons, and Jane would agree with him, and then they would pick the red
damask roses that Cardinal Wolsey had planted, and walk back under the
shadow of the clipped yew hedge to eat cherries and junket in the room
that looked out towards the sunset.
Winona had warmed to her work. Her imagination, always her strongest
faculty, completely carried her away. She pictured her heroine's life,
not from the outside, as historians would chronicle it, a mere string of
events and dates, but from the inner view of a girl's standpoint. Did
Jane wish to leave her Plato for the bustle of a Court? Did she care for
the gay young husband forced upon her by her ambitious parents? Surely
for her gentle nature a crown held few allurements. The clouds were
gathering thick and fast, and burst in a waterspout of utter ruin.
Jane's courage was calm and hopeful as that of Socrates in the dialogues
she had loved.
"... your soul was pure and true,
The good stars met in your horoscope,
Made you of spirit, fire and dew."
quoted Winona enthusiastically. Browning always stirred her blood, and
threw her into poetical channels. She cast about in her mind for any
other appropriate verses.
"Ah, broken is the golden bowl, the spirit gone for ever,
Let the bell toll--a saintly soul floats on the Stygian river.
Come, let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung,
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young,
A dirge for her, the doubly dead, in that she died so young."
"So they finished their foul deed, and laid her to rest," wrote Winona,
"the earthly part, that is, which perishes, for the true part of her
they could not touch. Farewell, sweet innocent soul, of whom the world
was not worthy. To you surely may apply Andre de Chénier's tender lines:
"'Au banquet de la vie à peine commencé
Un instant seulement mes lèvres out pressé
La coupe en mes mains encore pleine.'
Vale, little Queen! May it be well with thee! Ave atque vale!"
Winona glanced anxiously at the clock as with a hard breath she paused
for a moment and laid down her pen. Her theme had taken her so long that
she had only ten minutes left for the other questions. There was no
romantic side to be expressed in these, so she scribbled away
half-heartedly. Her uncertain memory, which had readily supplied
quotations from Browning or Edgar Allan Poe, struck altogether when
asked for such sordid details as the names of the Cabal ministry, or
the history of the Long Parliament. The bell rang, and left her with her
paper only half finished. At one o'clock the candidates were given an
hour's rest, and a hot lunch was served to them in the dining-hall. At
two they returned to their desks, and the examination continued until
half-past four. Winona found the questions tolerable. She did fairly,
but not at all brilliantly. Her brains were not accustomed to such
long-sustained efforts, and as the afternoon wore on, a neuralgic
headache began, and sent sharp throbs of pain across her forehead. It
was so irksome to write pages of Latin or French verbs; she had to
summon all her courage to make herself do it. The last hour seemed an
interminable penance.
At half-past four, twenty-one rather dispirited candidates filed from
the room.
"Well, thank goodness it's over! I never want to write another word in
my life. My hand's stiff with cramp!" exclaimed the girl with the red
hair-ribbon to a sympathetic audience in the passage.
"It was awful! I didn't answer half the questions. My swastika isn't
worth its salt. I shall give it away!" mourned the owner of the mascot.
"They expected us to know so very much; we should be absolute
encyclopaedias if we had all that pat off at our fingers' ends!" sighed
the girl with the fair pigtail.
"How did you get on?" Winona asked the ruddy-haired girl, who was wiping
her spectacles nervously.
"Oh, I don't know. It's so hard to tell. I answered most of the
questions, but of course I can't say whether they're right or wrong.
Wasn't the Latin translation just too horrible? I yearned for a
dictionary. And some of the French grammar questions were absolute
catches!"
"We went on too long," said Winona. "It would have been much better to
spread the exam, over two days."
"Do you think so? I'd rather have 'sudden death' myself. It's such a
relief to feel it's finished. It would be wretched to have to begin
again to-morrow. I hardly slept a wink last night for thinking about it.
I'm going to try and forget it now."
Winona nodded good-by to her fellow candidates, and took her leave. How
many of them would she see again, she wondered, and which among all the
number would have the luck?
"Certainly not myself," she thought ruefully. "I know my papers weren't
up to standard. I believe that red-haired girl will be one. She looked
clever!"
Winona had spent the preceding night with Aunt Harriet, who offered to
keep her until the result of the examination should be published, but
the prospect of spending a week of suspense at Abbey Close was so
formidable, that she had begged to be allowed to return home, excusing
herself on the plea that she would like to be with Percy during the
remainder of his holidays. It was a very subdued Winona who reached
Highfield next afternoon.
"Hello, Tiddleywinks! You've lost the starch out of you!" Percy greeted
her. "Did they say they wouldn't have you at any price?"
"The result won't be out till the fifteenth, but I expect I've failed,"
answered Winona gloomily.
"Buck up, young 'un! Look at yours truly! I fail nine times out of ten,
and do I take it to heart?"
Winona laughed in spite of herself. Percy's complacency over small
achievements was proverbial. But she had higher ambitions, and the cloud
of depression soon settled down again. Her temper, not always her strong
point, displayed a degree of irritability that drove her family to the
verge of mutiny.
"Really, Winona, I don't remember you so fractious since you were
cutting your teeth!" complained her much-tried mother.
The days dragged slowly by. Winona had never before realized that each
hour could hold so many minutes. On the morning of the 15th she came
down to breakfast with dark rings round her eyes.
"I shall be glad to be put out of my misery!" she thought, as the
postman's rap-tap sounded at the door.
Mamie made a rush for the letter-box, and returned bearing a foolscap
envelope addressed to:
MISS WINONA WOODWARD,
Highfield,
Ashbourne,
nr. Great Marston.
Winona opened it with trembling fingers. But as she read, her face
flushed and her eyes sparkled.
"I have much pleasure in informing you" (so ran the letter) "that the
Governors of the Seaton High School have decided to award you a
Scholarship tenable for two years...."
In silence she passed the paper to her mother.
"Congratulations, dear child!" cried Mrs. Woodward, clapping her hands.
"It's the unexpected that happens!"
"Oh, my goodness!" ejaculated Percy. "You never mean to tell me that
Tiddleywinks has actually been and gone and won!"