While he was reading Mrs. Cartwright had been watching Ellen and had decided that she had been blind the night before, for she had missed much of the attraction in her face. Just now Ellen's eyes twinkling with fun were fixed on the major's face, and Mrs. Cartwright watched her with a pleased smile. "Your masterpiece he calls it," she exclaimed, as her husband finished; "isn't that just like a reporter? How does he know you'll never surpass it?" "Bless me, I don't see how she could surpass it," ejaculated the Major, "I'll not call the fellow a false prophet yet." "I don't believe you'll have the chance--ever," retorted Ellen. "I haven't an idea what I said and by the time I make my next speech no one else will remember." "What do you mean, my dear young lady?" he asked astonished. "It was never in the world extempore." "That or nothing." And Ellen, sensitive to a genial change in herself, though, perhaps but dimly conscious of it, told the whole story with so keen a relish for the satiric elements in it, that her listeners were delighted. Her unconcern met with no protest from companions too unfamiliar with her ways to reproach her for not being quite herself. Elsewhere she might not have dared to disregard the imperious demands of what was expected of her; but here she was not coerced by any preconceived notions of what she was likely to do. "And it's all gone from you?" said Mrs. Cartwright. "Yes, just as completely as if the thing had never happened. It's just as though you had done something very clever in a dream, and found when you tried to do the same thing after you were awake that you had forgotten the most important part of it." "But the fellow ought to have attended to his business better," said Major Cartwright. "What was he there for if not to report?" He took up the paper again. "The man's a fool. A plea for the higher education!" "That's what it was meant for," murmured Ellen. "It converted you, anyway," contended Mrs. Cartwright, nodding at him. "Never heard anything so absurd," he went on disregarding them. "Where did he get all this stuff about the practical value of the higher education?" "From me, I am afraid. You see when he found he couldn't have the best, he decided to take the next best, and asked me for the notes of the speech I intended to make. I tried very hard indeed to catch my thoughts about Bryn Mawr and pin them down for inspection as my views on college life. But they escaped me, I'm glad to say." "I can't believe it of you. Why when you got through you had stirred in me afresh the enthusiasms of years ago." "That's not so much of a compliment as it seems, my dear," interrupted Mrs. Cartwright. "His enthusiasm on some subjects is perennial. It needs only the word 'college' to set him going. But come along and help me with the roses. If we go on like this, we'll begin to think you just made an ordinary speech after all."