Are Parents People? — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
Are Parents People?
John Stuart Mill · en
But she would not do that; her first duty was to her friend. She knew
Aurelia would want to know that the photographs and the letter were
safe. She stayed by her bedside until it was time to leap downstairs
and run across the campus to the dining room, her appetite merely edged
by the toast and jam.
Monday was a busy day for Lita. Immediately after luncheon her
committee met and went over the reports of the monitors for the week;
and then there was basket ball for two hours, and then study. The
tennis courts were near the athletic field, and as Lita played with the
first team she could hear a deep voice booming out the score as Doctor
Dacer and Miss Jones played set after set. Miss Jones had been tennis
champion of her college the year before. Lita sent out a young scout
to bring her word how the games were going, and learned that Dacer was
winning. He must be pretty good, then--Jonesy was no slouch. She would
have taunted him in the evening, when she went to say good night to
Aurelia, if he had let himself be beaten by Jonesy.
Every Monday evening Miss Fraser, the English teacher, read aloud
to the senior members of her class. Miss Fraser was something of a
problem, because she was so much more a lover of literature than a
teacher. She inspired the girls with a fine enthusiasm for the best;
but in the process she often incited them to read gems of the language
which their parents considered unsuited to their youth. Shakspere she
read quite recklessly, sometimes forgetting to use the expurgated
edition. When Miss Barton suggested pleasantly that perhaps Antony and
Cleopatra was not quite the most appropriate of the plays, Miss Fraser
answered, "Don't they read worse in the newspapers in bad prose?"
At present she was conservatively engaged in reading Much Ado About
Nothing. No one could object to that, she said. She made it seem witty
and contemporary.
Lita slipped over to the infirmary between supper and the reading to
bid Aurelia good night. Dacer wasn't there. She stayed, talking a few
minutes with Aurelia, who was well enough to hear about the tramp and
the bedroom slippers and a little school gossip. Lita asked casually
where the doctor was, but no one seemed to know.
When a little later she entered Miss Fraser's study she found to her
surprise that he was there, settled in a corner. Miss Fraser explained
that Doctor Dacer was the son of an old friend of hers; he had been
kind enough to say that it would be a pleasure to him to stay and hear
the reading. She need not have felt under the necessity of apologizing
to the six or seven members of her class. They felt no objection to his
presence.