"That's your motto in life! You look out for stars--"
"Yes! So do you. That's why I wanted to be friends."
"I wonder!" mused Darsie, and sat silent, gazing into the fire. "It is
beautiful, and I understand the drift, but--would you mind paraphrasing
it for my benefit?"
"It's so simple. There _is_ mud, and there _are_ stars. It's just a
choice of where we choose to look."
"Yes--I see. But don't you think there are times--when one is awfully
down on one's luck, for instance--when there's no one on earth so trying
as the persistent optimist who _will_ make the best of everything, and
take a cheerful view! You want to murder him in cold blood. I do, at
least. You feel ever so much more cheered by some one who acknowledges
the mud, and says how horrid it is, and pities you for sticking so
fast!"
Margaret's ringing laugh showed all her pretty white teeth. She rubbed
her hands together in delighted appreciation.
"Oh, I know, I know! I want to kill them, too. Vision's not a mite of
use without tact. But no bars can shut out the stars if we choose to
let them shine."
Her own face was ashine as she spoke, but anything more unlike
"goodiness," abhorred by every normal girl, it would be impossible to
imagine.
"Tell me about your work--how do you get on with your coach?" she asked
the next moment, switching off to ordinary subjects in the most easy and
natural of manners, and Darsie found herself laying bare all the little
hitches and difficulties which must needs enter into even the most
congenial course of study, and being alternately laughed at and
consoled, and directed towards a solution by brisk, apt words.
"You're all right--you've got a head. You'll come through on top, if
you'll be content to go slow. Want to take the Tripos first year, and
honours at that--that's your style! Calm down, my dear, and be content
to jog. It pays better in the end." She flashed a radiant smile at
Darsie's reddening face, then jumped up to greet her other guests of the
evening, three in number, who appeared at that moment, each carrying her
own precious portion of milk.
One was "Economics" and owned so square a jaw that the line of it (there
was no curve) seemed to run down straight with the ear; another was
"Science" and wore spectacles; a third was "Modern Languages," like the
host, but one and all shared an apparently unlimited appetite for Cocoa,
Conversation, and Chelsea buns, the which they proceeded to enjoy to the
full. "Modern Languages" being in the ascendant, indulged in a little
"shop" as a preliminary, accompanied by the sighs, groans, and
complaints incidental to the subject.
"How's your drama getting on? Is it developing satisfactorily?"
Student Number Two inquired of Darsie, in reference to the paper given
out at the last lecture in Divinity Hall, and Darsie shrugged with a
plaintive air.
"I've been struggling to develop it, to _trace_ its development, as he
said; but the tracings are decidedly dim! I get on much better with a
subject on which I can throw a little imagination. `The growth of the
novel,' for instance--I wove quite a fairy-tale out of that."
The girls smiled, but with a dubious air.
"Better be careful! That's a ruse which most of us have tried in our
day, and come wearily back to sober fact... How do you like the
Historical French Grammar?"
The Fresher made a gesture as if to tear her hair, whereupon the second-
year girls groaned in chorus.
"Hopeless! Piteous! In last year's Tripos the paper was positively
inhuman. The girls said it was impossible even to understand the
questions, much less to answer them."
"Wicked! Waste of time, I call it. Most of us are training to teach,
but it's not one in a hundred who will be called upon to teach _that_
erudite horror."
Darsie looked at Margaret France as she spoke, and saw at once by the
expression of her companions that she had touched on a delicate subject.
There was a moment's silence, then--
"I am not going to teach," said Margaret, smiling.
"Really! Then-- What are you going to do?"
"Live at home."
A future profession seemed so universal a prospect with the Newnham
students that Margaret's reply amazed Darsie as much as it appeared to
annoy her other hearers.
Economics sniffed, and muttered beneath her breath; Science stared
fixedly at the ceiling through her glittering spectacles; Modern
Languages groaned aloud.
"With your brain! With your spirit! After this training! Such wicked
waste..."
Margaret laughed lightly.
"Oh, Darsie Garnett, how mean of you, when I feed you with my best
Chelsea buns, to land me in this time-honoured discussion! I'm an only
child, and my parents have been perfect bricks in giving me my wish and
sparing me for three whole years! The least I can do is to go home and
do a turn for them. I fail to see where the waste comes in!"
"All you have learned--all you have studied--all you have read--"
"Just so! I hope it will make me a more interesting companion for them.
And for myself! I've got to live with myself all the days of my life,
remember, and I do _not_ wish to be bored!"
"You have such power, such capacity! You might do some work for the
world!"
"I intend to. What's the world made up of, after all, but a number of
separate homes? As a matter of ordinary common sense isn't it best to
work in one's _own_ home, rather than in a strange one?"
Margaret threw out her hands with a pretty appealing gesture, and her
companions stared at her in silence, apparently too nonplussed to reply.
Before they had time to rally to the attack, however, a startling
interruption had occurred.
With a suddenness and violence which made the cocoa-drinkers jump in
their seats the door burst open, and the figure of a girl in evening
dress precipitated herself into their midst. Her light skirt was thrown
over her shoulders, revealing an abbreviated white petticoat; her eyes
were fixed with a deadly determination; regardless of the occupants of
the room or of the articles of furniture scattered here and there, she
flew at lightning speed to the window, closed it with a resounding bang,
leaped like a cat at the ventilator overhead, banged that also, and with
one bound was out of the room, the door making a third bang in her wake.
Darsie gasped in dismay. She herself had been transfixed with
astonishment, but her companions had displayed a marvellous self-
possession. Margaret had wrapped her arms round the cocoa-table to
protect it from upset, another girl had steadied the screen, a third had
obligingly lifted her chair out of the way; but no sign of alarm or
curiosity showed upon their faces, which fact did but heighten the
mystery of the situation.
"Is she--is she _mad_?"
The second-year girls laughed in chorus. From afar could be heard a
succession of bang, bang, bangs, as if in every study in the house the
same performance was being enacted. Margaret nodded at the Fresher with
kindly reassurance.
"Only the fire drill! They've had an alarm, and she's told to shut off
draughts. Very good going! Not more than five or six seconds all
told!"
"There isn't really--"
"Oh, dear, no. No such luck! Poor fun having a fire brigade, and no
chance to show its mettle. But we live in hope. You ought to join. I
can imagine you making a magnificent captain."
So here was another ambition. Darsie made a mental note to inquire into
the workings of the fire brigade, and to offer her name as a recruit
without delay.