The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 2 (of 2) — John Shaqi
The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 2 (of 2)St. Aubyn, Alan
General
The master of St. Benedict's, Vol. 2 (of 2)
St. Aubyn, Alan
Cambridge (England) -- Fiction; School principals -- Fiction; Students -- Fiction
They brought her to, somehow, though everybody was begrudging the time
she spent upon her; and then somebody took her back in a fly to Newnham.
It was an awful blow to Newnham. Everybody reproached Maria Stubbs.
She hadn't half looked after her. Nothing that anybody said hurt poor
Maria like the prickings of her own conscience. She was guilty in the
matter of that last Hall. She had forgotten all about her charge until
the gooseberry-pie!
She nursed Pamela tenderly all through that wretched day. She did
what she could to atone for her past neglect. She brought her little
messes of Liebig and arrowroot every hour; she watched beside her
with the patient fidelity of a dog, while Pamela would have given
worlds to be left alone in her darkened room. She locked the door
against her officious nurse once, when she had gone out to fetch the
everlasting beef-tea, and Maria made such a ridiculous noise outside,
that threatened to bring all the Dons upon her, that she was obliged to
get up and open it again. There was nothing to be done but to turn her
face to the wall, and let the faithful creature potter about her to her
heart's content.
CHAPTER XXII.
READING THE LISTS.
It was the oddest state of things that can be imagined at Newnham all
through that next week. The order of everything was reversed. It had
been all work--real, desperate work--now it was all play.
It was hard work enough to get through the days. The exams. were all
over. There was nothing for the girls to do but to wait with what
patience Heaven had given them for the lists to be out. Some of them
were already quite indifferent to the lists, and when the strain was
over had gone to bed, like Pamela, and turned their faces to the wall.
Others had locked their doors and gone through their papers over and
over again, and had made up their minds exactly where they should be
placed when the lists came out. Some, more wise than the rest, had put
their papers in the fire, and relieved their overburdened minds with
large doses of fiction.
There was not a book opened in Newnham through all that week but
yellow-backs. Annabel Crewe declared that she had read eleven before
the week was half out, and a Natural Science girl had discovered that
an infallible method for distracting one's thoughts from 'ologies' was
to keep three sensational novels going at once.
One by one the Tripos lists came out, and the girls who had gone to
bed for good thought better of it, and got up again, and came down to
be congratulated, and admired, and made much of. The foolish virgins
who had burnt their papers, and behaved with corresponding frivolity
through all their University career, received the due reward of their
folly, and were snubbed and condoled with in the most approved
fashion. If one is down one must expect to be sat upon, or what would
be the advantage of success?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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