A Girl of the Limberlost | Page 5

matter of moment, and some of none
at all, cut and stung. She had no books. Where should she go when this
was over? What would she give to be on the trail going home! She was
shaking with a nervous chill when the music ceased, and the
superintendent arose, and coming down to the front of the
flower-decked platform, opened a Bible and began to read. Elnora did
not know what he was reading, and she felt that she did not care.

Wildly she was racking her brain to decide whether she should sit still
when the others left the room or follow, and ask some one where the
Freshmen went first.
In the midst of the struggle one sentence fell on her ear. "Hide me
under the shadow of Thy wings."
Elnora began to pray frantically. "Hide me, O God, hide me, under the
shadow of Thy wings."
Again and again she implored that prayer, and before she realized what
was coming, every one had arisen and the room was emptying rapidly.
Elnora hurried after the nearest girl and in the press at the door touched
her sleeve timidly.
"Will you please tell me where the Freshmen go?" she asked huskily.
The girl gave her one surprised glance, and drew away.
"Same place as the fresh women," she answered, and those nearest her
laughed.
Elnora stopped praying suddenly and the colour crept into her face. "I'll
wager you are the first person I meet when I find it," she said and
stopped short. "Not that! Oh, I must not do that!" she thought in dismay.
"Make an enemy the first thing I do. Oh, not that!"
She followed with her eyes as the young people separated in the hall,
some climbing stairs, some disappearing down side halls, some
entering adjoining doors. She saw the girl overtake the brown-eyed boy
and speak to him. He glanced back at Elnora with a scowl on his face.
Then she stood alone in the hall.
Presently a door opened and a young woman came out and entered
another room. Elnora waited until she returned, and hurried to her.
"Would you tell me where the Freshmen are?" she panted.
"Straight down the hall, three doors to your left," was the answer, as the

girl passed.
"One minute please, oh please," begged Elnora: "Should I knock or just
open the door?"
"Go in and take a seat," replied the teacher.
"What if there aren't any seats?" gasped Elnora.
"Classrooms are never half-filled, there will be plenty," was the answer.
Elnora removed her hat. There was no place to put it, so she carried it
in her hand. She looked infinitely better without it. After several efforts
she at last opened the door and stepping inside faced a smaller and
more concentrated battery of eyes.
"The superintendent sent me. He thinks I belong here," she said to the
professor in charge of the class, but she never before heard the voice
with which she spoke. As she stood waiting, the girl of the hall passed
on her way to the blackboard, and suppressed laughter told Elnora that
her thrust had been repeated.
"Be seated," said the professor, and then because he saw Elnora was
desperately embarrassed he proceeded to lend her a book and to ask her
if she had studied algebra. She said she had a little, but not the same
book they were using. He asked her if she felt that she could do the
work they were beginning, and she said she did.
That was how it happened, that three minutes after entering the room
she was told to take her place beside the girl who had gone last to the
board, and whose flushed face and angry eyes avoided meeting Elnora's.
Being compelled to concentrate on her proposition she forgot herself.
When the professor asked that all pupils sign their work she firmly
wrote "Elnora Comstock" under her demonstration. Then she took her
seat and waited with white lips and trembling limbs, as one after
another professor called the names on the board, while their owners
arose and explained their propositions, or "flunked" if they had not
found a correct solution. She was so eager to catch their forms of

expression and prepare herself for her recitation, that she never looked
from the work on the board, until clearly and distinctly, "Elnora
Comstock," called the professor.
The dazed girl stared at the board. One tiny curl added to the top of the
first curve of the m in her name, had transformed it from a good old
English patronymic that any girl might bear proudly, to Cornstock.
Elnora sat speechless. When and how did it happen? She could feel the
wave of smothered laughter in the air around her. A rush of anger
turned