"Hear! hear!" said Eileen.
"Do not interrupt me with that senseless remark. I speak to you from my soul. You come here to study, to forget yourselves in the great riches of the past. You are like two miners come to dig out the gold. You have heard of that awful place, Klondike, where people go mad over earthly gold. Yours is the intellectual, the spiritual, the gold which is treasured in the great storehouses of the past."
As Belle spoke she paced up and down the room. Her dress was very untidy, and there was a great rent behind. While she was speaking there came a soft tap at the door. She did not hear it. Eileen went and opened it. Lettie stood without.
"Dear me, Lettie, do come in," said Eileen. "We have not seen you for quite a long time-nearly twenty-four hours."
She kissed her cousin as she spoke.
"How are you getting on?"
"Capitally," said Lettie. "I went to your rooms in North Hall and heard that you were here. You did not visit me, so I thought Belle might be engrossing your society. How are you, Belle?"
"Well, thank you," replied Belle, in an absent voice. "By the way, are you?-oh, yes! I remember now; you are-the girl who ought never to have come to St. Wode"s."
"You are quite mistaken," replied Let.i.tia with spirit. "I am a girl who will be very much benefited by the pleasant life which I see opening before me. By the way, Eileen and Marjory, I am going to the Broad now.
There are a lot of things I require for my room. I thought perhaps you would like to come too. You will want shelves for your books and a few knick-knacks and--"
"If you go with that young person--" said Belle, making a step forward.
She approached Eileen and almost glared into her face.
Eileen laughed.
"Dear Belle, do finish your sentence," she said. "What is to happen to me if I dare to go to the Broad with poor Lettie?"
"You make my soul sink in despair," said Belle. "I scarcely know what I feel; my heart is wrung. Oh! how you disappoint me!"
"Whether you buy things or not, Eileen, do come with me," said Lettie.
"I don"t know my way to the Broad at present, and would rather be with you than alone. Whatever you may do in the future, please remember that I am your first cousin, almost your sister, and we have lived together all our lives."
"Of course, dear Lettie, we will both come," said Eileen. "Belle, we will visit you another day; we are only interrupting your work now."
"I was resting when you arrived," said Belle. She threw herself tragically back against one of the hard-bottomed chairs. "Go-yes go; I don"t expect to see much of any of you. It is the fate of those who would explore, who would delve in the mines of the past, to bring up diamonds alone; we are solitary in our labor. I had a hope, it is true, when I saw you in London; but never mind. Go, all of you; there is the door-go!"
"I wish you"d let me mend your dress first," said Lettie, whipping a neat little housewife out of her pocket and preparing to thread a needle.
"Mend my dress?" said Belle. "What do you mean?"
"If you will just stand with your back to the light, you can go on thinking and talking; I won"t be a minute sewing up that awful rent. You are not respectable as you are. Now, do let me."
"Yes, do, Belle; don"t be a goose," said Marjorie.
Belle"s eyes flashed. Lettie was already attacking her with needle and thread. The rent was presently sewn up.
"I tell you what it is," said Lettie good-humoredly, "I"m not half such a bad soul as you make me out. Now that I happen to be in the same hall--"
Belle shivered.
"I"ll run up to this desolate attic, now and then, and look after your wardrobe."
"You won"t; for I shan"t admit you," said Belle.
"Yes, I will. I shall take opportunities of coming in when you are absent. You are a friend of Marjorie and Eileen; and, for the sake of their respectability, you must not go about in absolute rags. Now, come, girls, and leave her in peace."
Belle approached her attic window. She stood now with her back to the girls and her face to the view; but it is to be doubted if she saw it.
Her dress, a dirty serge, trailed along the floor, one wisp of her thin hair had escaped from the little knot at the back of her head, and was lying on her shoulder.
"Poor Belle," said Eileen, with a sigh.
"I tell you what it is, girls," said Lettie, as she went downstairs.
"Belle is such an oddity that, if something is not done to save her, she will soon lose her senses. I mean to hunt her up. I was wondering last night what my mission in this place could be. I little thought that I was to be inflicted with Belle Acheson."
"She certainly doesn"t wish for you, Lettie, so you needn"t take her up unless you like," said Eileen.
"Oh, I must do something," said Lettie; "that fact has been well borne in upon me-it is to be Belle Acheson or nothing. No trial could well be greater. I hope I shall benefit by it. But come now; I want to order my things."
"Must you order them to-day?"
"Of course I must. My room is disgracefully bare; and as I have plenty of money I mean to make it as pretty and cheerful as possible, and as like a dream."
"Have your lectures been decided for you yet?" said Eileen, in a would-be stern voice.
"Yes; I saw Miss Browning after breakfast. I am going to work a little bit at literature."
"A little bit at literature! Lettie, you are perfectly awful."
"Well, I"m not going to kill myself, darling, if that"s what you mean.
Of course I shall work for so many hours a day; but I don"t think I shall take honors. If I get through my pa.s.s exam., I shall consider that I am doing admirably. Now do come, girls; hurry up. You must have tea with me to-morrow in my room. I expect I shall know all the nicest girls in the place; they are going to call on me most likely this evening. Oh, I shall make my room perfectly sweet. You will all love to come to me; and if I can wheedle that poor old Belle out of her den, I shall feel that I have achieved a triumph. But tell me now, girls, how you are both getting on?"
"Very well, indeed," said Eileen.
"And you are not going to buy pretty things for your rooms?"
"No."
"At least let me recommend you to provide yourselves with a tea-service each; because if other girls invite you to tea you must return the compliment. Then they give endless cocoa parties here, and you will be expected to take your share."
"I don"t see that at all," replied Eileen. "If we are bound to entertain a great deal at St. Wode"s, we may just as well stay with mother in London. I mean to ask Miss Frere about the poor; surely we can visit them if we like?"
"I don"t know anything about that," said Let.i.tia. "To quote your own words, you have come here to study. Surely you can visit the poor when you college life is over?"
"We can at least make clothes for them; that is a good idea," said Marjorie.
"Much better than visiting them," cried Let.i.tia. "You can buy yards of holland and any other stiff, disagreeable, p.r.i.c.ky material you like, and work away in your leisure hours when the rest of us are having fun. By the way, have you seen Miss Gilroy this morning?"
"Two or three times. Poor girl, I rather pity her. She is in a room with a dreadful creature of the name of Annie Colchester."
"How pretty Miss Gilroy is," said Lettie. "Might we not call and ask her to come to the Broad with us? She is sure to want things for her room."