L. Meade - Girls New and Old

"My idea is neither abstruse nor wild," replied Kate. "Do listen, Amy; you can speak and argue as much as you like when you know what I mean. You and I, my dear, belong to the afflicted tribe – we live in cubicles. We are the Dwellers in Cubicles – that is our name. There are times, Amy, when Mary Jane and Julia make my cubicle anything but an abode of peace. I've not the least doubt that Harriet and Pussy give you headache also at odd intervals. It is not easy to write good epitomes of our lectures when we are sitting between two fires of idle badinage, chaff, silly stories, and sometimes even – I'll just whisper the word – quarrelings.

"Now, in this house there are a certain number of rooms which fortunate students hold undisputed sway over. Some of these students are obliging, and during the hours of study, share their rooms with their less fortunate friends; but others are selfish, perhaps from thoughtlessness, and keep their rooms to themselves. I have been racking my brains over a careful calculation, and I find that, supposing St. Dorothy's to be quite full, every student in the place could be accommodated with a quiet corner for study, if each girl who has a room to herself would share it with one chum between supper and prayer time. Of course, such a state of things can't be enforced by any rules or any order, but it is my belief that moral suasion can do a good deal. I want to bring morality to bear in the matter. I want to form a club, and I want to force the girls to become members of it; those who refuse can be sent to a sort of moral Coventry. The object of the club will be to wage war against selfishness, and particularly against that awful form of selfishness which sports its oak, to borrow an Oxford phrase, against the suffering Dwellers in Cubicles. What do you say, Amy, to my darling scheme?"

"Oh, my dear, I should love it, of course," replied Amy; "but unfortunately I belong to the Dwellers in Cubicles. Molly's opinion is worth having, for she belongs to the opposite side."

"I brought Molly here on purpose," said Kate. "Molly is just in the position to give a perfectly candid and unbiased opinion. She is a privileged member of the Single-room Fraternity. She has made no special friends as yet. Now, Molly, you can tell me frankly what you think of the scheme. How, for instance, would you like to share your room with an outsider?"

Molly thought for a moment.

"You speak frankly to me," she said, "and I must reply in the same spirit. I have a great friend. I am hoping against hope that she may come to St. Dorothy's. My friend is poor, and I know that she will be obliged to come here in the least expensive way. She will not have a room to herself, and I look forward with great pleasure to giving her any little privilege I can. I hope that she and I may study together in my room."

"Well, Molly, then you are in favor of the plan?" said Kate, looking at her a little anxiously.

"Yes; but then I am not unselfish, for it would be delightful for me to have Cecil in my room."

Kate gave a faint sigh.

"No one knows the difficulties under which the Dwellers in Cubicles labor," she exclaimed. "I, for instance, have a passion for certain kinds of work, but I'm afraid, although I manage to please my lecturers, that I am something of the scatter-brain order of human beings. When I hear Julia and Mary Jane chatting and quarreling, and calling across to each other over my head, and sometimes rushing to meet each other just outside my curtain, to exchange either blows or kisses, I must own that my poetic ideas or my thoughtful phrases are apt to melt into a sort of Irish frenzy. The fact is, under the existing condition of things, I indulge in Irish frenzy every night of my life, and it is bad for me in every way; it is simply ruining my character. I get into a furious passion, then I repent, and I get into bed really quite weak, it is so fearfully exhausting."

"Oh, Kate, I can't help it!" exclaimed Molly. "You must be my chum until Cecil comes. Perhaps Cecil won't come at all. Oh, I fear as much as I hope about that. If you will be satisfied to be my chum, only until Cecil comes, you are heartily welcome, Kate."

"You are a duck, and I accept heartily," said Kate, in her frank way; "but because I have reached an ark of shelter, that is no reason why I should not extend a vigorous hand to a drowning sister."

"Mary Jane, for instance," exclaimed Amy. "Who is the unfortunate victim who is to admit that Dweller in Cubicles into her inner sanctuary?"

"Twenty to one Mary Jane won't wish to go," replied Kate. "Anyhow, the nice, honest, hard-working, white sheep can't be crushed on account of the black. I am going to draw up rules for the new club to-morrow. I shall quote Molly Lavender as a noble example of unselfishness. I shall have an interview with Miss Leicester, and get her to give her sanction to my scheme. Oh, I'm certain she will, when she recognizes the terrible position of the studiously minded Dwellers in Cubicles."

FOUR boys were seated round the break fast table. They ranged in age from fourteen to ten. One glance at their faces was sufficient to show that they belonged to the average healthy-minded, hearty, English schoolboy. A girl was pouring out coffee for the quartet. She was standing to her work. Her age might have been sixteen: in some respects she looked older, in some respects younger. She was a tall, slim girl, with a somewhat long face of a pale but clear olive. Her eyes were dark, large, and well cut; her brow was particularly noble. She had quantities of straight, thick, black hair, which was swept off her forehead and fastened in a thick knot at the nape of her neck. The girl's name was Cecil Ross. She was Molly Lavender's dearest friend, the one around whom Molly's warmest thoughts, hopes, and affections were centered. The boys were eating their breakfast with the voracious appetite of the British schoolboy. The eldest had a look of his sister.

"I say, Ceci," he exclaimed, "how white you are! You've been fagging last night; I know you have, and I call it a beastly shame."

"Oh, never mind me, Maurice," said Cecil; "I have to study, you know, and really you four do want such a lot of mending and making and seeing to generally, that if I don't sit up a little bit at night, I simply get no study at all. Jimmy, darling, is it necessary to put six lumps of sugar into that cup of coffee?"

"There's no sweetening in this sugar," said Jimmy, aged eleven; "I can't make it out. What ails it? I put ten lumps in last night, Ceci, when you were out, and the coffee only tasted like mud."

"Like treacle, you mean," said Maurice. "Don't you think it's a shame to waste good food? You're a greedy youngster, and I'll punch your head if you don't look out."

Jimmy bobbed his curly fair head, for Maurice had extended one strong young hand as he uttered his threat.

"It's time for us all to be off now," he said, rising from the table and shaking the crumbs from his Norfolk suit.

"Like dear boys, do go out quietly," said Cecil; "Mrs. Rogers has spent a very suffering night, and I don't want to wake her."

"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Jimmy; "what with no sugar, and having to keep as still as mice, how is a fellow to have a chance? I say, Maurice – Oh, I say, I didn't mean it; no, I didn't, Ceci, not really."

The boys clattered off; Cecil heard them tumbling and scrambling downstairs; she uttered a faint sigh for Mrs. Rogers' chance of sleep, and then walked to the window to watch them as they ran down the street. They attended the Grammar School – the far-famed Grammar School of the little town of Hazlewick; the school was at the corner of the street.

"How Maurice grows!" thought Cecil, as she watched them. "Of course, I know this sort of thing can't go on. There's not money enough; it can't be done, and how are they to be educated? I wouldn't tell dear old Maurice what brought the black lines under my eyes last night. No, it wasn't study, – not study in the ordinary sense, – it was that other awful thing which takes more out of one than the hardest of hard work. It was worry. Try as I would, I could not stretch my cloth to cover the space allotted to it. In short, at the end of the year, if something is not done, I, Cecil Ross, will be in debt. Now, I'm not going into debt for anyone. I promised mother six months ago, when she died, that somehow or other I'd keep out of debt, and I'll do it. Oh, dear, dear! what is to be done? I suppose I must give up that delightful scheme of Molly's, that I should go to Redgarth for two or three years, and perfect myself in all sorts of learning, and then take a good post as head-mistress of some high school. I don't see how it's to be done – no, I really don't. What would the boys do without me?"