"Oh, I hate to walk, let _me_ take the cab," the other girl begged,
beginning hastily to arrange her hair. "I've got plenty of money. It's
the only thing I have got." She paused, the brush in her hand. "Haven't
you?" she asked, addressing herself to Marise's reflection in the glass.
Marise was passably astonished at the unceremonious question, but
answered it simply, "I haven't any of my own. I live with my father. And
he hasn't any either, but he makes a good deal, gets a good salary, I
mean. He lets me have all I need."
Eugenia's comment on this was to say bitterly, "Think of not knowing
more than to ask such a question! I told you I don't know anything. But
I can learn. I can learn in a minute if only I get the chance. I learned
then ... from the way you looked. I'll never make _that_ fool mistake
again."
She pinned on a very pretty, costly hat, and Marise saw that she really
did not look like a child, after all. She ran her arm under Marise's
now, and gave it an ecstatic squeeze. "Oh, I'm so happy!" she cried, "I
wish I could buy you a diamond necklace!"
The talk in the cab as they clattered over the big paving-stones of the
quiet, half-deserted left-bank streets turned on the school, and very
soon Marise was led to say, "But, see here, I don't believe, Eugenia,
you've got into the right school at _all_. It's not a bit chic, you
know, to go to a girl's lycee, and ours is one of the plainest of them
all. The teachers are terrible grinds, the girls are fearfully
serious-minded. They don't care a thing about their looks. All they want
is to pass the competitive exams for the Ecole Normale at Sevres, and
get in there for four more years of grind, lots and lots worse than at
the lycee. You'd better believe there's nothing _but_ what France did
in India before the English got there, et ainsi de suite."
Eugenia made a gesture of despair. "_There!_" she lamented, "that's it!
Not even to know enough to pick out the right school!"
And then a curious expression of suspicion coming into her eyes, she
said skeptically, "but _you_ go to that school! If it's good enough for
you...!"
Here again was something in that baffling other dimension, and this time
though she understood it as little as ever, Marise did not like it at
all. She said stiffly, "I'm going because you can get serious
instruction in some things I need to enter the classes at the Sorbonne
next year."
Eugenia sprang at her, remorsefully crying, "I won't again. I don't know
what made me." She kissed her once more, rubbing her cheek against the
other's shoulder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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