"I've been struggling to develop it, to _trace_ its development, as he said; but the tracings are decidedly dim! I get on much better with a subject on which I can throw a little imagination. `The growth of the novel,' for instance--I wove quite a fairy-tale out of that." The girls smiled, but with a dubious air. "Better be careful! That's a ruse which most of us have tried in our day, and come wearily back to sober fact... How do you like the Historical French Grammar?" The Fresher made a gesture as if to tear her hair, whereupon the second- year girls groaned in chorus. "Hopeless! Piteous! In last year's Tripos the paper was positively inhuman. The girls said it was impossible even to understand the questions, much less to answer them." "Wicked! Waste of time, I call it. Most of us are training to teach, but it's not one in a hundred who will be called upon to teach _that_ erudite horror." Darsie looked at Margaret France as she spoke, and saw at once by the expression of her companions that she had touched on a delicate subject. There was a moment's silence, then-- "I am not going to teach," said Margaret, smiling. "Really! Then-- What are you going to do?" "Live at home." A future profession seemed so universal a prospect with the Newnham students that Margaret's reply amazed Darsie as much as it appeared to annoy her other hearers. Economics sniffed, and muttered beneath her breath; Science stared fixedly at the ceiling through her glittering spectacles; Modern Languages groaned aloud. "With your brain! With your spirit! After this training! Such wicked waste..." Margaret laughed lightly. "Oh, Darsie Garnett, how mean of you, when I feed you with my best Chelsea buns, to land me in this time-honoured discussion! I'm an only child, and my parents have been perfect bricks in giving me my wish and sparing me for three whole years! The least I can do is to go home and do a turn for them. I fail to see where the waste comes in!" "All you have learned--all you have studied--all you have read--" "Just so! I hope it will make me a more interesting companion for them. And for myself! I've got to live with myself all the days of my life, remember, and I do _not_ wish to be bored!" "You have such power, such capacity! You might do some work for the world!" "I intend to. What's the world made up of, after all, but a number of separate homes? As a matter of ordinary common sense isn't it best to work in one's _own_ home, rather than in a strange one?" Margaret threw out her hands with a pretty appealing gesture, and her companions stared at her in silence, apparently too nonplussed to reply. Before they had time to rally to the attack, however, a startling interruption had occurred.