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"What?" said Ethelwynne fretfully, "don't mumble so and run your words together. I can't hear the gong very well either. And the Latin test is coming the first hour after breakfast. I haven't had a chance to review an ode. I feel so wretched! Oh, me! oh, me!" Ethelwynne never forgot that Latin test. The very first line written by the instructor on the blackboard smote her with despair.
"I am so provoked at myself for jumping at every little noise! It is shameful to have so little control over my own nerves even if I am tired. Ah! what was that?" "Jump again," advised Ethelwynne in a tone that was meant to be serene but proved rather jerky. "It was nothing but my teeth chattering and clicking together."
I don't believe the stuff hurts me a particle. Doctors always want you to give up the things you like best." "Oh, Ethelwynne!" groaned Agnes, "you never deny yourself anything. It is the only trait I don't like in you. Now you have caught a dreadful cold just because you could not refuse the candy. You must break it up with quinine." She fetched a small box from the bureau in her bedroom.
The time you have spent on it! How distressing!" She stopped in thoughtful fear that she might be adding to the girl's disappointment. "An accident, you say? How did it happen?" "Something startled me so that I twirled around in my seat, and my elbow knocked the ink over. I I am very sorry." Her lips felt stiff. Ethelwynne watching with miserable eyes saw her moisten them.
"Our doctor at home has a theory that people take cold easily when they have been eating too much sweet stuff. He says that colds are most frequent after Thanksgiving. Now I wonder I believe why, you surely did go to a meeting of the fudge-club in Martha's room last night. Ethelwynne, did you eat it? Did you eat it even after all the doctor said to you about your sick headaches?"
"I told you I was a homeopath," expostulated Ethelwynne, "how was I to know that allopaths always swallow their pills whole?" "Wh-wh-why did you suppose it was coated with chocolate?" gasped Agnes. "So as to improve the taste of course and tempt me to eat it. I am fond of chocolate. If it is my duty to eat a pill, I want it to be inviting.
I don't want to do anything that I don't want to do, specially when I am sick. Well, anyhow, I shall never touch another." However, by bedtime Ethelwynne was feeling so miserable that finally after long urging she consented to swallow another dose of quinine in the orthodox way.
Here she recalled two words, there three, with a vanishing, vague, intangible verse between. The meaning had slid away utterly, leaving only these faulty mechanical impressions of the way the poem had looked in print. Struggle as she would, the thought frolicked and pranced just beyond the grasp of her memory. Ethelwynne bit her lip grimly and put the cap on her fountain-pen.
Thirty dollars for this sheet of paper! Thirty whole big beautiful dollars to send home for Christmas. They need it pretty badly. I've worked hours and hours, and now they shall have a real Christmas! I know what mother wants and couldn't afford " Ethelwynne stamped her foot. "It was all your fault. I couldn't hear. I couldn't think. I couldn't remember. The pill did it. You made me take it.
She sat staring in horrified silence at her ruined drawing. Finally Ethelwynne puzzled by the continued stillness peered with one eye from the sheltering fringes. She sprang up with a jump. "Agnes, your beautiful fungi!" A knock sounded at the door. "Come," called Agnes in mechanical response. There was a pause; then the knob turned and the visitor entered with diffident step.
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