THAT VIRGIL EXAMINATION.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume VI, Issue 33, 16 August 1890, Page 18

THAT VIRGIL EXAMINATION.

T was an aggravated case of the " o , '*l , l ie >’ verging on pneumonia, but 'll any one not in the doctor’s confidence Si’fesL 'll might have mistaken it for an aggravated case of the blues, verging on sab ,dj|fcs4 crossness. S’. ’ .‘‘faff ‘ What will you have for lunch, «/ •j/’L-JEJ dear ?’ asked Mrs Pulsifer. Berthaslowly drew the coverlet down Si. from her face, and displayed a counten- / ill!/ m Iw ance that wore the disconsolate, exI 'T pression of a sick owlet. Mrs Pulsifer 1 i wzl ' ,a ‘* never walked the wards of an owl hospital, but she could not help remarking the resemblance. ‘ Nothing,’ groaned Bertha, making a grimace over the spoonful of medicine which Aunt Amy hastened to thrust between her lips. ‘ I wish people would let me alone.’ ‘ But you must take something, my child,’ insisted, the mother, gently. ‘ How would a slice of soft toast do with a taste of Mrs Roby’s nice ielly ?’ ‘ I hate toast,’ responded the invalid, almost savagely, as she made an impatient tug at the bedclothes, ‘ and I wish I might never again see a glass of jelly as long as I live.’ ‘How glad I am I’m not a glass of jelly !’ exclaimed a fresh young voice at the door. The rosy face of Flo Keene, Bertha’s seatmate at school and constant companion, peeped through the opening. ‘ May I come in, Mrs Pulsifer? I met Dr. Lincoln and he said I might. He told me to brighten Bertie up.’ ‘She needs it,’ said Aunt Amy, who was given to pointing very sharp morals; ‘ she’s been in a state of settled gloom—absolutely sinful, I call it—ever since morning.’ ‘ Poor dear!’ said Flo, compassionately, seating herself lightly on the bedside and stroking Berthas thick brown braid’that lay across the pillow. Mrs Pulsifer withdrew to the kitchen, but Aunt Amy remained, rocking back and forth in a chair of dolorous squeak, and clicking her knit-ting-needles with industrious energy. Bertha suddenly opened her mouth and spoke ; but the eflect was rather as if she had exploded. ‘ Aunt Amy ! I wish you would take that chair and those needles and go out of this room I I can’t bear it another minute ! 1 just can’t !’ ‘Did—l—ever !’ exclaimed Aunt Amy, rising in high dudgeon, and rustling toward the door. ‘lf this is the kind of grippe the Czar has, 1 pity the Czar’s relations. That’s all I’ve got to say !’ * There, dear, she’s gone,’ said Flo, soothingly, as the door closed, not too softly. ‘ Perhaps site has chronic grippe in her disposition. We mustn’t judge our neighbours—especially our aunts.’ ‘ She means everything all right,’ sighed Bertha, con-science-smitten, ‘ ami 1 have been naughty, Flo, —just as naughty as could be, all day.’ ‘ Never you mind,’ returned Flo, cheerfully, ’ ‘ you’re nice enough for me, any time. Now you mustn’t talk. The doctor said you mustn’t. I’m to do all the talking, very calmly and slowly, just so, like an aged minister murmuring hymns in his sleep.’ Flo’s merry tongue ran on, with an easy overflow of girlish spirits, but still the dismal look shadowed Bertha’s eyes. The hall clock chimed the half-hour. It was almost time for Flo to hurry to school. She leaned her elbow upon her knee ami nestled her round chin in her palm, thoughtfully contemplating the rueful face on the pillow. But it was not in Flo’s nature to spend much time in contemplation. In a minute her young mind was made up. Glancing toward the half-opened door, she spoke in a lowered tone. * The doctor told me not to mention agitating subjects, but doctors don’t know everything, and I will. So there ! For I know you’re fretting your dear heart out, Bertie, over that Virgil examination to-qrorrow afternoon.’ The drooping corners of Bertha's mouth gave an acquiescent quiver. Flo continued : * You think it’s pretty hard that after we have kept our marks so near together all through the course, and had the

first two seats in the first row, one or the other of us, on every single public day so far, now at the very end you should fall back only because this old Virgil examination happens to come while you’re sick.’ Bertha’s eyelashes were tipped with shining tears. ‘ I shall have to sit way down in the second or third row on our last public day,’ she whispered, huskily. ‘'Tisn’t the first seat I care about, Flo. I would rather you had that, really I would, —you’re so much brighter than I am. But I have studied so hard, and Ido want to be next you. Besides, it’s not fair-, Flo. I know my Virgil. It’s not fair in Mr Snood always to count absence as a failure, whatever the reason may be.’ ‘ Of course it’s not fair,’ responded Flo. shaking her curly head, indignantly. ‘Mr Snood ought to be dressed in a braided mantle of red tape. Wouldn’t he look like a funnylittle mandarin ? But don’t you worry, dear-. It mustn’t be so. It sha’n't. I’ll do something. See here, Bertie ! I might fail myself,—on purpose, you know.’ Bertha’s tearful eyes dilated with horror, and she grasped Flo’s wrist with her fevered hand. ‘ No, no ! That would be dreadful. Promise me you won’t do that, Flo. Promise me quick, or I’ll get worse.’ ‘ Well, I promise,’ said Flo, reluctantly. ‘ And there’s the bell; I must run. But don’t worry, dear. I’ll find some other way out. Now remember : ‘Just as true As I love you. I’ll pass that Virgil “ zam ” for two.' With this impromptu lyric, Flo rained a dozen kisses on Bertha’s hot forehead, and slipped softly- out of the room, leaving upon the invalid’s face the first glimmer of a smile that had been seen there since morning. All that afternoon not one of the two hundred pupils in the Girls’ High School was as studious as Flo. This state of things was quite exceptional. But from the opening gong to Mr Snood’s dismissal, Flo poured at every opportunity over her Ancient Geography. She drew the map of Asia Minor, traced the coast-line of Italy, and moved her hat-pin up and down the states of Hellas with as much absorption as if she were laying out a pleasure-trip for the next-summer ; and for the first time in her life she distinctly informed herself which islands of those troublesome groups so much frequented by classic mariners belonged to the round, pink Cyclades, and which to the oblong, yellow Sporades. When the afternoon session was over, Flo turned her back resolutely on all remonstrating classmates, and made a busy-bee-line across the park to her father’s house. It was a large, empty house. Mr Keene was a preoccupied lawyer, and motherless Flo was his only child. There were servants and there was a housekeeper, there were kittens and canaries, but there was no one to interfere with Flo, who studied until dinner-time, was excused before dessert, and studied until so late in the night that she deemed it expedient to tuck a shawl along the bottom of her door, so that her father, coming upstairs to his own room long after he supposed his daughter wrapt in tranquil slumbers,might not be rudely undeceived by- a tell-tale streak of light.

Indeed, if the whole truth must be told, Flo had slipped down to the kitchen earlier in the evening and prevailed upon Nora to make her a cup of black coffee, which was only- partly- efficacious, as the small hours approached, in counteracting the drowsy effect of the rules of Latin prosody. In vain did sleepy Flo re-arrange the lists of exceptions so that they- would fall into a rhyming singsong : ‘ An bis cor cis in fac fer, Nec is qua quis vir per ter, Vas os (dickory dock) And sometimes hie and sometimes hoc.’ Even in the midst of her chant, the curly-head fell forward on the dog-eared page, and Flo started to consciousness, after an hour’s nap, to discover herself very cold and almost too sleepy to find the way to bed. The next morning, as Flo walked into the cloak-room with her Latin grammar open in her hand and her heavylidded eyes fastened to the page, the girls raised a chorus of astonished exclamations. ‘ Flo cramming !’ ‘ What ! Flo Keene ?’ ‘ Why, Flo, I thought you always scanned by ear.’ ‘ And yesterday she was working over the maps, for I saw her.’ ‘ Nonsense ! Flo grinding at geography- ! Why, Flo glories in not knowing anything about geography.’ But Flo was too much occupied with the vagaries of increments to make answer. That fateful afternoon the Ciesar, Cicero ami Virgil classes met in the great school-hall for written examination. The small girls in Latin grammar looked up at them with reverent sympathy as they filed in. It was a momentous occasion—nothing less than the annual examination on text. Other examinations came in .lune, but the Latin text examinations were assigned to February, that the students might have the rest of the y-ear for drill in writing Latin prose and Latin verse. Miss Snow, the teacher of the classics, presided over the examination. Having written the questions on the blackboard, she sat down at the principal’s desk and opened a volume of Ruskin. She knew it Was her business to see that no cheating went on in the room, but her soul sickened within her at the thought. ‘ It is for the Recording Angel to take note of that,’ she said to herself ; ‘ not for me.’ She raised her eyes from her book as seldom as [Htssible.

At first questions came thick and fast. Miss Snow’sanswers were usually cutt, for the reason that tfie questions were usually unnecessary. Then the scratching of pens was all that cou’d be heard. As the afternoon wore away, the scratching grew rapid, even frenzied. Presently the rustle of folding paper became frequent. Gne girl after another stole on tiptoe up to the desk, added her contribution to one of the three piles of manuscript and hurried out of the room, to swing cramped arms and dance for relief in the wide entry, while she eagerly compared blunders and hairbreadth escajies with her no less excited neighbours. Flo was usually one of the first to go, but this afternoon she sat on, driving her pen at desperate speed, until none but the very dullest girls were left. The gong sounded for the close or the session. Miss Snow, nearly as much exhausted as the students by the ardour and anxiety that charged the atmosphere, looked down with a hesitating hand on Mr Snood’s little silver bell, into the Hushed, wistful, apprehensive faces upturned to hers. ‘Just ten minutes of grace,’she said, ‘ and then I positively call in every paper.’ The malicious minute hand on the great clock—the very same hand that could creep so sluggisly when the recitation period was all but over, with the next girl nearly done reciting and that crooked passage you could not construe coming next—seemed to whirl for those ten rounds. Miss Snow pretended not to notice his unseemly antics, but in about fifteen minutes she set her lips firmly together and struck the bell. The tired girls, starting nervously, gathered up their blurred, disordered papers, and slowly brought them forward. Last of all came Flo Keene, with crimson cheeks and inky fingeis. ‘ Please, when may we know ’’ she asked, lingering a moment at the desk.

Miss Snow surveyed the three appalling heaps of manuscript grimly enough. ‘ln twenty-four hours,’ she answered with determination, and Flo, Hashing a loving good-night out of her frank gray eyes, left the teacher to her labours. There were no Greek or Latin classes the next day, and Miss Snow did not appear until near the close of the afternoon session. Then, pale and hollowed-eyed, with a large pile of examination papers upon one arm and a record-book under the other, she walked into the large hall, where the music-master was giving the whole school an exercise in singing, and proceeded toward the desk. Mr Snood, who was sometimes credited with standing not a little in awe of his first assistant, with fidgety politeness drew up a chair for her beside his own, polished his eye glasses, and gave himself up to the inspection of a long slip of paper, which Miss Snow laid before him. The girls recognised the significance of the situation. Such slips of paper followed examination as surely as skating followed frost. This would be posted under the clock presently, and all who had borne the ordeal of the day before might have the happiness of reading their names upon it. How sharply the four hundred eyes watched the two expressive faces that were bent together above that slip of paper ! Mr Snood’s safi’ron countenance, at first sagacious and critical in expression, suddenly took on a look of surprise,, then of correction, then of perplexity, then of expostulation. Determination sat enthroned on Miss Snow’s broad forehead. There was whispered consultation, earnest and animated, but it was soon apparent to every one of the two hundred girls that Miss Snow had carried the day. Mr Snood’s reddish hair was ruffled all over his learned crown, and his eyebrows were twisted into two disconcerted knots, when he gave the signal for dismissal, announcing first that Miss Snow would remain awhile in the Latin re-citation-room to confer with any students who should not find their names upon the pass-list which he was about topost.

It was dusk before the unhappy group around that recita-tion-room door had melted away. One by one the girls went in, with tearful eyes and quivering lips. One by one they came out, with some little touch of encouragement on their woe begone young faces, and silently took their waydown the darkening stairs to the cloak-room.

As the last one made her melancholy exit, Flo Keene danced across the shadowy threshold. Miss Snow, who sat at the desk with her head resting on both hands, glanced up and smiled somewhat faintly- in greeting. Miss Snow herself looked white and exhausted. Her dress, on the left shoulder, was quite wet from the pressure of tearful, sym-pathy-seeking faces. ‘ Why are you here, Flo ?’ the teacher asked, with a hint of mischief in her tone. ‘ Your name was posted.’ ‘ Was it ?’ cried Flo. ‘ I didn’t look, but oh ! Bertha’s name was there. 1 knew you put it there. I knew you would. ’ Flo started to fall upon her teacher’s neck, but Miss Snow prevented her with an impulsive gesture. ‘ No, dear, I’m too tired to be hugged. Stand on your own two feet and tell me what put such a performance into your saucy head.’ ‘ Why, ’twas this way,’ chattered Flo, perching herself on the radiator, and swinging her French kid boots with a rashness that revealed a missing button ‘ Bertie and I have learned our Latin lessons together ever since Ma.sa. We built Ca-sar’s bridge for the class, we two, with the janitor to help us, don’t you remember ? and we strewed it all over with violets for—what was it ? But, anyhow, I know all Bertie’s strong points and all her weak ones, as well as I do my own. Didn’t you see the difi'erence in our papers ? ‘I wrote the one I signed “Bertha Pulsifer” before I wrote mine, and I nearly bubbled over to think how amazed you’d be at the swimming way I located all those dreadful geographical names that always trip me up in class. I gave the rules of prosody like a book on Bertie’s paper, too, but I made the translation stiHand solemn, just as she does—“of which things ” and “therefore, inorder that” and all the rest of it—while on mine I had a much nicer translation, but slips in the rules and references, so as to keep it natural. Didn’t you see ?’

‘ I saw all that,’ said Miss Snow, and through the darkness Flo felt her teacher’s grave smile, ‘ and something more. I saw that we could not in justice pass one girl upon another girl’s work, but I saw that we could not in frankness deny how truly this paper of yours represented what Bertha would have done, if she had been present. So I used your Berthapaper as a lever to pry up an old rule of the school, which is too hard,-—harder than life, —the rule that absence for whatever reason from class or examination is to be counted failure, and hereafter we shall have a new order of things.

Those absent because of illness are to be granted another trial. ’ ‘ O Miss Snow—’ * There, there, child ! That will do. Hug the post, if you must hug something. But this concession is worth so much to the school, that I—we—Mr Snood thinks no girl will feel wronged by his special action in Bertha’s case. We rank her on the passing-list for three reasons, —don’t dance into my waste-basket, —because her Virgil record for the year is exceptionally high, because in this critical stage of her illness the removal of anxiety is all-desirable, anti because we want these two hundred girls to feel that, in the school-room, as out, friendship counts for something, and has power to help in trouble. ‘Now jump off my radiator and run and tell Bertha all about it. Tell her, too, that her sickness has taught you more geography and prosody than have all my scoldings. Run along, dear, before it is any later. The story will do Bertha twice as much good as tfie doctor’s doses.’ Despite Aunt Amy’s (emphatic predictions to the contrary, it did.

Katharine Lee Bates.