Anne felt a little comforted by this conclusion.
March came in that winter like the meekest and mildest
of lambs, bringing days that were crisp and golden
and tingling, each followed by a frosty pink twilight
which gradually lost itself in an elfland of moonshine.
Over the girls at Patty’s Place was falling
the shadow of April examinations. They were studying
hard; even Phil had settled down to text and notebooks
with a doggedness not to be expected of her.
“I’m going to take the Johnson Scholarship
in Mathematics,” she announced calmly.
“I could take the one in Greek easily, but I’d
rather take the mathematical one because I want to
prove to Jonas that I’m really enormously clever.”
“Jonas likes you better for your big brown eyes
and your crooked smile than for all the brains you
carry under your curls,” said Anne.
“When I was a girl it wasn’t considered
lady-like to know anything about Mathematics,”
said Aunt Jamesina. “But times have changed.
I don’t know that it’s all for the better.
Can you cook, Phil?”
“No, I never cooked anything in my life except
a gingerbread and it was a failure—flat
in the middle and hilly round the edges. You know
the kind. But, Aunty, when I begin in good earnest
to learn to cook don’t you think the brains
that enable me to win a mathematical scholarship will
also enable me to learn cooking just as well?”
“Maybe,” said Aunt Jamesina cautiously.
“I am not decrying the higher education of women.
My daughter is an M.A. She can cook, too.
But I taught her to cook before I let a college
professor teach her Mathematics.”
In mid-March came a letter from Miss Patty Spofford,
saying that she and Miss Maria had decided to remain
abroad for another year.
“So you may have Patty’s Place next winter,
too,” she wrote. “Maria and I are
going to run over Egypt. I want to see the Sphinx
once before I die.”
“Fancy those two dames ‘running over Egypt’!
I wonder if they’ll look up at the Sphinx and
knit,” laughed Priscilla.
“I’m so glad we can keep Patty’s
Place for another year,” said Stella. “I
was afraid they’d come back. And then our
jolly little nest here would be broken up—and
we poor callow nestlings thrown out on the cruel world
of boardinghouses again.”
“I’m off for a tramp in the park,”
announced Phil, tossing her book aside. “I
think when I am eighty I’ll be glad I went for
a walk in the park tonight.”
“What do you mean?” asked Anne.
“Come with me and I’ll tell you, honey.”
They captured in their ramble all the mysteries and
magics of a March evening. Very still and mild
it was, wrapped in a great, white, brooding silence—a
silence which was yet threaded through with many little
silvery sounds which you could hear if you hearkened
as much with your soul as your ears. The girls
wandered down a long pineland aisle that seemed to
lead right out into the heart of a deep-red, overflowing
winter sunset.
