It was awfully, awfully interesting. Robbie Belle said she didn't want to; but Berta and Lila and I talked and talked and talked. We sat in the windows and talked instead of dancing between dinner and chapel. We talked after chapel, and on our way to classes or to meals. And of course we talked while we were skating or walking or doing anything similar that did not demand intellectual application. Lila even talked about the classes in her sleep. We discussed everybody who happened to attract our attention.
Finally we had sifted out all the candidates for the highest class except three. One was the senior president, pink and white and slender and gentle and she never thumped when she walked or laughed with her mouth open or was careless about spots on her clothes or forgot the faces of new girls who had been introduced to her. The second was a professor who was shy and sweet and went off lecturing every week. The third was a teacher who looked like a piece of porcelain and always wore silk-lined skirts and never changed the shape of her sleeves year after year. Not one of the three ever hurt anybody's feelings.
Miss Anglin was obliged to go into the second class because she had moods. No, I don't mean because she had them,--for sometimes you cannot help having moods, you know--but because she showed them. She let the moods influence her manner. Some mornings she would come down to breakfast as blue as my dyed brilliantine--(how I hated that frock!)--and would sit through the meal without opening her mouth except to put something into it; though on such occasions we noticed that she rarely put into it very much besides toast and hot water. On other days she made jokes and sparkled and laughed with her head bent down, and was so absolutely and utterly charming that the girls at the other tables wished they sat at ours, I can tell you. We three were exceedingly fond of her, but we agreed at last after arguing for seven days that true courtesy makes a person act cheerfully and considerately, no matter how she may feel inside.
There were about nine in that second class, and fourteen in the third and twenty in the fourth, when we started in on Mary Winchester.
Lila and I were rushing to get ready for the last skating carnival of the season. Some one knocked at the door. It was Mary, but she didn't turn the knob when I called, "Come." She just waited outside and gave me the trouble of opening it myself. Then in her offish way she asked if we were through with her lexicon. After I had hunted it up for her, she happened to notice that Lila was wailing over the disappearance of her skates.