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Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous admiration. "O Maria Mitchell Kiewit," she declaimed, "hearken! I have the honor me, myself I snatch it, seize it the honor to announce that thou thee you your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!"
The name inside was that of a sophomore who had already contributed several articles to the Monthly. Then I opened the envelope belonging to number seven. "Maria Mitchell Kiewit," I read, "who in the world is she? I've never heard of her. She must be a freshman." Jo who was half way out of the room stopped at the word and thrust her head back around the door. "Did little Maria Kiewit write that?
You notice that I had found occasion to use the foregoing expletive several times since first meeting Miss Maria Mitchell Kiewit. She nodded gloomily in acknowledgment of my sympathetic comprehension. "Yes, once when I described lights in a fog as 'losing their chromatic identity' instead of saying they 'blurred into the mist, she asked me to drop physics in the high school.
But truly we had just been reading a volume of college stories, and one was about a girl who plagiarized some poems and passed them off as her own. And this Maria Mitchell Kiewit had behaved almost exactly like her. "Or possibly what?" demanded Jo. Adele stammered. "Or p-p-possibly oh, nothing! Maybe she is ashamed of the story or something like that. She lacks self-esteem probably.
Jo wickedly flung the door wide open. "Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering heroine comes," she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the buttons on her waist.
I straightened up into a dignified right angle. "What can I do for you, Miss Kiewit?" "I wish to withdraw my story," she announced still at the same strained pitch, "I have changed my mind. Here is the ten-dollar bill." "But it went to press three days ago," I exclaimed. "And the Annual has gobbled up second choice," said Jo triumphantly. "We jumped at it," corroborated Berta.
When you are starving, have you ever eaten popcorn buttered for a first course and crystallized for a second? It is the most delicious thing! I had just settled myself in a steamer-chair with the heaped up pan of fluffy kernels within reach of my right hand, when there came a knock on the door. "Enter!" called Janet. The knob turned diffidently and in marched Maria Mitchell Kiewit.
I had to hurry in order to overtake her before she could reach her own room. She must have been sobbing to herself, for she did not notice the sound of my steps on the rubber matting till I was near enough to touch her elbow. Then how she jumped! "Pardon me, Miss Kiewit. May I speak to you for one minute?" She nodded.
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