With so many other things crowding on her attention, Barbara's flicker of curiosity about her roommate did not last long. The moment of mutual understanding after the play was brushed over by more absorbing intimacies. Her appetite for "college life," instead of becoming dull, like most appetites, grew with what it fed upon. Perhaps, on the whole, her interview with the registrar had left too pleasant an impression upon Barbara. It made her feel so prospectively virtuous that she was soon overdrawing her present account as recklessly as ever. A second summons only served to whittle her intentions to another point, which wore as blunt with time. Even after the Christmas holidays, Barbara was always ready for a hot chocolate at Uttley's, or an afternoon or evening, too often both, on ice or snow.
She had never failed in her life, and she did not expect to fail now. Nor did she deliberately choose to absent herself from the society of her books. But the little lake, alive with gliding figures, called imperiously through the east window of 64 Mead. She could not keep her eyes from it if she stayed in her room. Of what use, then, to say no, when somebody with skates in hand knocked at the door? Perhaps next year there would be no such ice all winter. And there might be a storm to-morrow. What so cosy as to study, study, study while it snowed?
But when the storm came, and Mead Hall awoke to find itself shut away behind a wall of white magic, it proved much cosier to lie on a couch at Migs's side and read a new novel. The next day there was snowshoeing.
The weather certainly conspired against Barbara that winter. Perhaps it was a triumph for her to keep up even a speaking acquaintance with her books.
"I'll cram before exams, and get through somehow," she said to herself. "Next semester I'll begin at the start and work steadily."
The decision imparted such satisfaction to her spirits that she drew back her hand from solid geometry, and went off light-heartedly with Tiny-for-Short to see what they could do with skis on the hill. They found a good deal to do with them, and solid geometry waited patiently.
Relentlessly the calendar thrust the reluctant college on toward "mid-year's." The schedule appeared, and was greeted with groans. Girls who had homes within reach found themselves confronted with examinations at the beginning, middle, and end of the torturing period. Girls who had nowhere to go received almost a week of freedom. Diversions fell away; the shadow darkened. Week after next - next week - the pit yawned.
"You'll get straight credit," said Beryl Taylor to Doris.
"I? Never in this world! If I only get through -"
"Get through! Migs, come over here and listen to Doris."
"What's the joke?" asked Migs.
"Do you think she'll pass?"
"Doris? Didn't we say last night she was sure of straight credit?"
"You're both crazy," said Doris.
"Bab! Bab! Come out and see your roommate blush."
Barbara's face appeared above a "busy" sign, with which she proceeded to decorate the door. "Let her alone," she commanded. "I heard you. Of course she'll get through with credit."
"Don't you wish it were catching?"
Barbara nodded. "Now run along. We want to study. Come in, Migs."
As she and Migs mapped out a plan of campaign against cylinders, and pyramids, and spheres, Barbara did wish that credit were catching. Somebody seemed to have juggled with the text since she had last seen the book.
She looked across to the other desk, and wished she had studied regularly like Doris. Even Migs appeared to know a good deal. It was astonishing that Migs should know so much when Barbara knew so little. Had Migs not wasted her days as blithely?
"When did you do it, Migs?" Barbara asked.
"Do what?"
"Learn all this."
"I have two hours free every morning," said Migs. "I made up my mind I'd keep them for math, because it's so hard for me, and I've done it."
Barbara surveyed disapprovingly the schedule of her examinations. What a nasty, ridiculous little schedule it was with mathematics leading off on Friday morning, and Latin trailing along a week later. If only she could change to a later "math" division, so as to have a full week of study! But no, the inevitable conflict forestalled that plan.
It was not the Thursday of the week before the semesters. Barbara vowed that a week from the following morning she would know enough solid geometry to pass the examination.
By Saturday night figures reeled in Walpurgian riot through her brain, and her clear eyes were dull. Thereafter she worked in sweater, coat, and golf gloves, with windows open. You got on faster, she explained to amused friends, and kept your head clear. Yes, it made you sleepy after awhile, but then you took a fifteen-minute nap, - of course somebody waked you, - and then you went on again.
The week and a half that Thursday had ushered in lived in Barbara's memory as a hideous dream. Where now were the joyous days? The care-free faces? There was no tonic for Barbara's spirit in the life round her.
The college delved from dawn till dusk - and afterward. It rose early, and went to bed late. The conventions of mid-year's required it. You were "scared to death." If you were not, you said you were. Otherwise your modesty might be doubted.
Wally was not frightened, and did not pretend to be. "That is one thing, D. D., that I will not stand for."
"I wish I felt as sure as you do."
"Sure! I'm sure of nothing except that I am not going to die twice. I've done my work, and I ought to get through. If I don't, I can leave college and plant beans."
"But I don't want to leave college," said Doris, "or plant beans."
Migs's giggle interrupted them. "Oh, you sharks! I never heard anything so funny in my life."
"What did you say?" Wally inquired.
"Sharks," Migs answered. "S-h-a-r-k-s."
"So far as I am concerned, you misapplied the term," said Wally.
The conversation took place after luncheon on Thursday, the first day of mid-year's. About four o'clock of the same afternoon, Wally put her head in at the door of Number 64.
"Who wants to go for a walk?" she asked.
"All of us," Barbara responded, promptly. "But we can't."
"It's our heads we're working to-day, Wally," said Tiny-for-Short.
Migs reached for a fresh sheet of paper.
"Better come," said Wally.
The three shook their heads sadly.
"You will, D. D. Get on your coat."
"Won't anybody else come? Tiny? Migs?"
"These originals won't let me," Migs sighed. "Only people who don't expect credit dare go walking the day before an exam."
"You'd be better off if you came, too," said Wally, drawing Doris with her out of the room.
Wally and Doris trudged along a white road toward the unsheltered country. Dash was with them. The wind blew their faces. It set their blood leaping, and drove thoughts of examinations far afield. They ran races with Dash. They snowballed each other until they were limp with laughter. Somewhere on the open road they met Janet Bland and Captain Dick, and they walked along briskly together. It was a very profitable hour for both of them, quite as profitable as any they had spent that day.
"Planning to sit up to-night?" Wally asked, as they turned into the path toward Mead.
"Not very long."
"What for?"
"Math," Doris replied. "Bab's going to."
"Don't. You know enough now. Study all you like this evening. At ten o'clock you go to bed in my room. Mary Baird can bunk with Bab. The sitting-up bee is buzzing round in her bonnet, too."
"I almost believe I will, Wally."
"Better get Bab not to sit up. The thing that's of most use in a math exam is a clear head."
But Barbara saw the matter differently. She could not afford a whole night's sleep. A clear head was all very well, but there were certain precise facts that you must know. And she would sleep enough; Doris need not worry. Nevertheless, Doris did worry. With all her heart she wished that mid-year's were over and that Barbara had safely passed them.
On the examination were nine questions, including five sets of a's and b's. "Answer seven questions," read the instructions, "including 8 and 9." Number eight wanted proof of the fact that if one of two spherical triangles is the polar of the second, the second is the polar of the first, and asked whether a spherical triangle can be its own polar. It was also inquisitive about trihedral angles, and spherical triangles of given face angles. Number nine - but why rehearse the torment?
Doris was the eighth freshman to pass in her blue book. When she left the room, Barbara was still writing busily. The sight cheered Doris. At least Barbara had known something about the questions.
She walked peacefully over to get the mail with Wally. In the post office Frances joined them, and the three began to compare notes. Then Beryl Taylor and Fay Keith, who were in the division that was to be examined Monday, fell upon them with ravenous questions.
On the whole it had been, every one agreed, a very fair examination.
Doris went up to her room, and took out her German books. The beginner's German examination came the next morning, and the course was what Doris heard her friends call "stiff." Nevertheless, she could not fix her attention. One corner of it persisted in bounding up like an alert terrier every time she heard a step on the stairs.
At last Barbara came in. Doris looked up eagerly. "Well," said Barbara, "that's over."
She gathered up the geometry and the papers that strewed the couch, and swept them into the bookcase.
"What did you think of it?" Doris asked.
"I didn't altogether like it, but it was fair enough. Did you answer them all?"
Doris nodded.
"I let the seventh go by, and I didn't touch the last," said Barbara. "But I did the rest after a fashion. Guess I flunked it."
"O Bab, no!"
"Narrow squeak, if I didn't. It won't raise my grade much. What comes next? French. Thank fortune, I'm not worried over that!"
Doris stared at her book with eyes that saw no word. Horrid tales of freshmen who had been dropped after mid-year's returned to her mind. There were too many in the class. Had not the registrar told Frances Harrison that she was at her wit's end what to do with them all? If they should drop Barbara!
"I don't believe you flunked it," Doris said.
"I'll get a note, I suppose, if I have flunked."
As one by one the mail hours went by and no note came, both girls took courage. Barbara never knew how hard Doris's heart beat when she came first to their post-office box.
When Doris returned from baby German and declared that she knew she had failed to "get through," Barbara's fear retreated further. "For she asked two whole questions," said Doris, "on something none of us had studied at all." If Doris thought that she had flunked, and Doris really did think so - although Wally scouted the idea, - surely a chance existed for Barbara to have been mistaken.
As the days passed slowly, hope and dread seesawed together, and yielded in the end to bewilderment - a bewilderment shared by Tiny-for-Short. Other girls heard from their mathematics examination. They had passed, or they had not. In either case, they were informed. Barbara and Tiny heard nothing.
It was a very distressing week; at intervals, examinations called for hastily assembled information; anxiety gnawed constantly.
And then, on the five-o'clock mail after the last freshman examination Friday afternoon, two notes came together. But Barbara's knees were shaking while she tore them from the box. Round her rose the babel that always accompanies the putting out of the mail. Into one ear Fuzz was pouring the latest plans for an ice carnival. On the other side, Nina and Migs were clamoring for some fun "right now, straight off quick. We've got to do something or burst." At Barbara's elbow Tiny was going through the contents of her box.
"All right. Let's celebrate. Where? Oh, I don't care. Suit yourselves."
So much Barbara had said before she opened the first envelope. She read and reread the note; then she slit the second, caught its meaning in a glance, and fitted the papers into their envelopes again. She wondered a little at her perfect coolness.
"I'm game for anything you say," she said. "Ice cream at Uttley's? Just the say for it. Only fifteen above zero."
"What's the matter, Tiny?" Fuzz asked, suddenly.
"Flunked math."
"No!"
"Here's her word for it. Didn't tell me sooner because she knew I was shaky all round. Didn't wish to handicap me in my other exams by bad news."
"Same here," said Barbara. "Only more so. I flunked English, too."
"O Bab!"
"It's my theme work. I never got round to do the stuff."
Tiny-for-Short ran her arm through Barbara's. It quivered a little, but Tiny never told.
Barbara's cheeks showed more color than usual, and her eyes were very bright. She was conscious only of a desire to get away from every one whom she knew. She did not want anyone to know how miserable she felt; so she talked very fast, and laughed a good deal, and raced Migs home in time to dress for dinner. The girls would not know how hard she was hit if they saw she had spirit enough to care about changing her dress.
Doris was coiling her long braids into a heavy knot at the nape of her neck when her roommate came in.
"I drew two flunk notes in the mail to-night," said Barbara, tossing the prettiest of her second-best dresses on the couch. "Math and English. How's that, Dorry?"
A hairpin dropped from Doris's hand. "What did you say?"
Barbara repeated her information.
"I'm sorry." Mechanically Doris went on doing her hair. She put away her brush and comb, stooped for the fallen hairpin, and slipped on her dress, not knowing what she did. Words stuck in her throat. The look in Barbara's eyes held her at arm's length.
Barbara thought impersonally that it was odd Doris should care more than she. For she herself did not seem to care at all. That was queer, too - unless not to care was the worst kind of caring.
Other people besides Doris cared. In the parlors, after dinner, girls came up sympathetically. A dull anger stirred in Barbara's heart. She did not want their pity; she resented it.
But her lips said, "Thank you, dear." "What a lot of people seem to mind what happens to me!" "You're all so good."
Only when she had gone to bed did Barbara begin to think coherently about the situation.
What would they do to her? Would they send her home? And what would her family say if she came home now? How could she ever tell her mother? Her father, who was so proud of his eldest daughter - what would he say? And the boys and girls at home? "Bab Leighton? Oh, yes, she's back again. Flunked out of college." The words scared her. Aunt Annabel would have been ashamed of her.
It was not as if she had done her best. If she had tried and failed, none would welcome a girl home more tenderly than her family. But to disappoint and disgrace them because she had not tried! To lose what she could not bear to lose! How she had grown to love the place even in half a year! Every stick and stone on the campus, the faces, the voices, the laughter - she could not lose it all!
Barbara clenched her hands under the blankets, and shook from head to foot. But no sound broke the stillness.
If only they would give her another chance! Oh yes, she knew perfectly well what they would say. They had warned her; again and again they had warned her and she had not heeded. But she would heed this time. She would!
The clock on the tower struck twelve desolate strokes. Loneliness closed upon her, stark loneliness. Oh, for a hand in the darkness! Oh, for arms - her mother's arms that had comforted her as a little girl when, after punishment, she had sobbed out her remorse for her naughtiness on her mother's heart. She had been naughty now, and she was sorry. Big college girl that she was, she wanted her mother.
Doris was not asleep. She had heard the clock strike eleven, and now she heard it strike twelve. She held her breath, and strained her ears through the darkness. She wished she knew whether Barbara was awake. She wished she dared jump out of bed and go to her and put her arms round her and tell her - it did not matter what. Nothing, perhaps. Only hold her. But Barbara was so proud. Doris felt she should not dare, even though they had roomed together a whole half year. And anyway, Barbara was asleep.
A sound, low, indistinct, broke the silence. Doris lifted her head. Again it came.
"Bab!" she whispered.
There was a moment of stillness before Barbara answered in a strange, thick voice:
"What is it?"
Doris threw back the covers. A little white figure scampered across the floor. A wet cheek touched Barbara's cheek, and arms strained her close.
"O Bab - Bab! Bab, dear!" sobbed Doris.