The particular mission that Madeline had discovered for the modern college girl was one that Helen Chase Adams would never probably do much to fulfil. But Helen had a mission of her own—the mission of being queer. Sometimes she hated it, sometimes she laughed at it, always it seemed to her a very humble one, but she honestly tried to live up to its responsibilities and to make the most of the opportunities it offered.

The loneliness of Helen’s freshman year had made an indelible impression on her. Even now that she was a prominent senior, an “Argus” editor, and a valued member of Dramatic Club, she never seemed to herself to “belong” to things as the other girls did. She was still an outsider. An unexplainable something held her aloof from the easy familiarities of the life around her, and made it inevitable that she should be, as she had been from the first, an observer rather than an actor in the drama of college life. And from her vantage point of observation she saw many strange things, and made her own little queer deductions and comments upon them.

On a certain gray and gloomy afternoon in November Helen sat alone in the “Argus” sanctum. She loved that sanctum—the big oak table strewn with books and magazines, the soft-toned oriental rugs, and the shimmering green curtains between which one could catch enchanting glimpses of Paradise River and the sunsets. She liked it as much as she hated her own bare little room, where the few pretty things that she had served only to call attention to the many that she hadn’t. But to-day she was not thinking about the room or the view. It was “make-up” day for the sketch department—Helen’s department of the “Argus.” In half an hour she must submit her copy to Miss Raymond for approval—not that the exact hour of the day was specified, but if she waited until nearer dinner-time or until evening Miss Raymond was very likely to be at home, and Helen dreaded, while she enjoyed a personal interview with her divinity. Curiously enough she was more than ever afraid of Miss Raymond since she had been chosen editor of the “Argus.” She was sure that Miss Raymond was responsible for her appointment, but she had never gotten up courage to thank her, and she was possessed by the fear that she was disappointing Miss Raymond in the performance of her official duties. So she preferred to find Miss Raymond’s fascinating sitting-room vacant when she brought her copy, to drop it swiftly on the table nearest the door, and stopping only for one look at the enticing prospect of new books heaped on old mahogany, to flee precipitately like a thief in the night.

The copy for this month was all ready. There was Ruth Howard’s monologue, almost as funny to read as it had been in the telling, next, by way of contrast, a sad little story of neglected childhood by a junior who had never written anything good before, and a humorous essay on kittens by another junior that nobody had suspected of being literary. There was also a verse, or rather two verses; and it was these that caused the usually prompt and decisive Helen to hesitate and even to dawdle, wasting a precious afternoon in a futile attempt to square her conscience and still do as she pleased about those verses. One of them was Helen’s own. It was good; Miss Raymond had said so with emphasis, and Helen wanted it to go into the “Argus.” She had rather expected that Jane Drew would ask for it for the main department of the magazine; but she hadn’t, and her copy had gone to Miss Raymond the day before. The other verses were also stamped with Miss Raymond’s heartiest approval, and like the rest of the articles that Helen had collected, they were the work of a “nobody.” Helen’s vigorous unearthing of undiscovered talent was a joke with the “Argus” staff, and her own great pride. But to-day she was not in a benevolent mood. She had refused all through the fall to have anything of her own in the “Argus”; she did not believe in the editors printing their own work. But these verses were different; she loved them, she wanted people to see them and to know that they were hers.

She had thought of consulting Jane or Marion Lustig, who was editor-in-chief, but she knew beforehand what either of them would say. “Put in your own verse, silly child! Why didn’t you say you’d like it used in the other department? We’ve got to blow our own horns if we want them blown. Use the others next time—or give them back.”

But by next month there might be an embarrassment of good material, and as for giving them back, Jane could do it easily enough, but Helen, being queer, couldn’t. For who knew how much getting into the “Argus” might mean to that unknown other girl? Helen had never so much as heard her name before, though she was a sophomore. She had a premonition that she was queer too, and lonely and unhappy. The verses were very sad, and somehow they sounded true.

“Perhaps she’ll be an editor some day,” Helen sighed. “Anyway I’ll give her a chance.”

She put on her coat and gathered up her manuscripts, first folding her own verses and pushing them vindictively into the depths of her own particular drawer in the sanctum table.

When she reached the Davidson she noticed with relief that Miss Raymond’s windows were dark. She was in time then. But when she knocked on the half-opened door she was taken aback to hear Miss Raymond’s voice saying, “Come in,” out of the shadows.

“Oh, excuse me!” began Helen in a frightened voice. “I’ve brought you the material for the sketch department. Please don’t bother about a light. I mustn’t stay.”

But Miss Raymond went on lighting the lamp on her big table. As she stood for a moment full in the glare of it, Helen noticed that she looked worn and tired.

“I’m very sorry that I disturbed you,” she said sadly. “You were resting.”

Miss Raymond shook her head. “Not resting. Thinking. Do you like to think, Miss Adams?”

“Why—yes, I suppose so,” answered Helen doubtfully. “Isn’t that what college is supposed to teach us to do?”

“I shouldn’t like to guarantee that it would in all cases,” said Miss Raymond smilingly. “Has it taught you that?”

“Yes,” said Helen. “I don’t mean to be conceited, Miss Raymond, but I think it has.”

“And you find it, as I do, rather a deadly delight,” went on Miss Raymond, more to herself than to Helen. “And sometimes you wish you had never learned. When people tell you sad things, you wish you needn’t go over and over them, trying to better them, trying to reason out the whys and wherefores of them, trying to live yourself into the places of the people who have to endure them. And when they don’t tell you, you have to piece them out for yourself just the same.” Miss Raymond came sharply back to the present and held out her hand for Helen’s bundle of manuscript.

Helen gave it to her in puzzled silence, and watched her as she looked rapidly through it.

“Ruth Howard?” she questioned, when she reached the signature of the monologue. “Do I know her? Oh, a freshman, is she? She sounds very promising. Ellen Lacey—yes, I remember that story. Cora Wentworth—oh, I’m very glad you’ve got something of hers. She needs encouragement. Anne Carter—oh, Miss Adams, how did you know?”

“How did I know?” repeated Helen in bewilderment.

Miss Raymond looked at her keenly. “So you didn’t know,” she said. “It is a mere coincidence that you are going to print her verses.”

“I don’t know anything about her,” Helen explained. “I heard you read the verses in your theme class last week. And at the close of the hour I asked you to let me have them and several other things. I used these first because I had all the prose I needed for this time.”

“I see,” said Miss Raymond. “Have you told her yet that you want them?”

“No,” said Helen, guiltily. “I was going to write her a note as soon as I got home. I didn’t suppose she would care.”

“I presume you noticed that they are very remarkable.”

Helen blushed, thinking how she had hesitated between these and her own production, which she was sure could not be considered at all “remarkable.” “I—well, I went mostly by what you said. I don’t believe I am a good judge of poetry—of verses, I mean.”

“You needn’t be afraid to call these verses poetry. But I don’t blame you for not fully appreciating them. No girl ought to understand the tragedy of utter defeat, which is their theme.”

Miss Raymond paused, and Helen wondered if she ought to go or stay.

“Miss Adams,” Miss Raymond went on again presently, “the author of those verses was in my room just before you came. She wanted to return a book that I lent her early in the term, by way of answering some question that she had brought up in my sophomore English class. She says that the book and the word of appreciation that went with it are the only kindness for which she has to thank Harding college, and that I am the only person to whom she cares to say good-bye. I don’t know why she should except me. I had quite forgotten her. I associated nothing whatever with the name on those verses until I looked at it again just now. I considered the tragic note in them merely as a literary triumph. I never thought of the girl behind the tragedy.” She waited a moment. “She’s going to leave college,” she went on abruptly. “She says that a year and a half of it is a fair trial. I couldn’t deny that. She says that she has made no friends, leaves without one regret or one happy memory. Miss Adams, would you be willing, instead of writing her a note, to tell her personally about this?”

“Why, certainly,” said Helen, “if you think she’d like it better.”

“Yes, I am sure she would. You won’t find her at all hard to get on with. She has a dreadful scar on one cheek, from a cut or a burn, that gives her face a queer one-sided look. I suspect that may be at the bottom of her unhappiness.”

On the way across the campus Helen had an inspiration, which led her a little out of her way, to the house where Jane Drew, the literary editor of the “Argus” lived.

“I’m so relieved that my department is all made up,” she told Jane artfully, “that I feel like celebrating. Won’t you meet me at Cuyler’s for supper?”

Jane promised, a good deal surprised, for Helen was not in the habit of asking her to supper at Cuyler’s; and Helen, after arranging to meet her guest down-town, hurried on to the address that Miss Raymond had given her, one of the most desirable of the off-campus houses.

Miss Carter was in, the maid said, and a moment later she appeared to speak for herself. She flushed with embarrassment when she saw Helen, and her dreadful, disfiguring scar showed all the more plainly on her reddened cheek.

“Oh, I supposed it was the woman with my washing,” she said. “I don’t have many calls. You must excuse this messy shirt waist. Please sit down.”

“Won’t you take me up to your room?” asked Helen, trying to think how Betty Wales would have put the other girl at her ease. “We can talk so much better there.”

Miss Carter hesitated. “Why, certainly, if you prefer. It’s in great confusion. I’m packing, or getting ready to pack, rather,” and she led the way up-stairs to a big room that, even in its half-dismantled condition, looked singularly attractive and quite different somehow from the regulation college room.

“I have a dreadful confession to make,” said Helen gaily, when they were seated.

“I’ve taken your verses for the ‘Argus.’ I’ve already sent them in to Miss Raymond, and now I’ve come to ask if you are willing. I do hope you are.”

“Why certainly,” said Miss Carter quietly. “You are perfectly welcome to them of course. You needn’t have taken the trouble to come away up here to ask.”

Then she relapsed into silence. Helen could not tell whether she was pleased or not. She had an uncomfortable feeling that she was being dismissed; but she did not go. Never in her life had she worked so hard to make conversation as she did in the next ten minutes. The “Argus,” the new chapel rules, Miss Raymond and her theme classes, the sophomore elections,—none of them evoked a responsive chord in the strange girl who sat impassive, with no thought apparently of her social duties and responsibilities.

“She must think I don’t know how to take a hint,” reflected Helen, “but I don’t care. I’m going to keep on trying.”

Presently she noticed that from Miss Carter’s window could be seen Mrs. Chapin’s house and the windows of her and Betty’s old room.

“That was where I lived when I first came to Harding,” she began awkwardly, pointing them out. Then she looked at the girl opposite, read the misery in her big gray eyes, and opened her heart. Betty Wales, who had worked so hard to get at a little of the story of Helen’s freshman year would have been amazed at the confidences she poured out so freely to this stranger. Indeed Helen was surprised herself at the ease with which she spoke and the dramatic quality that she managed to put into her brief account of the awkward, misfit, unhappy freshman.

Miss Carter listened at first apathetically, then with growing interest.

“Thank you,” she said gravely, when Helen had finished. “I thought I was the only one who felt so.”

“Oh, no, you aren’t,” said Helen brightly. “There are lots of others, I guess.”

“No one with a thing like this,” said the girl, with a swift, passionate gesture toward her scar.

“Don’t,” said Helen gently. “Please don’t think about it. No one else does, I’m sure.”

“I got it just before I came here,” went on the girl, speaking almost fiercely. “It came in a horrible way, but it’s horrible just of itself. I entered Harding because I thought the college life—the girls and the good times and the work—would help me to forget it—or to get used to being so ugly.”

Helen considered a moment in silence. “I guess we’re even more alike than I thought,” she said at last. “We both expected college to do it all for us, while we—just sat. But I can tell you—do you play basket-ball? Anyhow you’ve seen it played. Well, you’ve got to keep your eye on the ball, and then you’ve got to jump—hard. Have you noticed that?”

Miss Carter laughed happily at Helen’s whimsical comparison. “No,” she said, “I’ve never been much interested in basket-ball. I’m afraid I’ve ‘just sat’ or jumped the wrong way.”

Helen considered again, her small face wrinkled with the intensity of her thought. “You mean you’ve jumped away from the very things you were trying to get hold of,” she said. “You’ve expected things to come to you. They won’t. You’ve got to do your part. You’ve got to jump very often, and as if you meant it.”

The girl nodded. “I see.”

“You can do one thing right away,” said Helen briskly, rising and buttoning her coat. “Do you know Jane Drew? Well, she’s an awfully clever senior and an editor. She’s going to have dinner with me at Cuyler’s, and I’d like you to come too. You see one of the things you have jumped into already is being a star contributor to the ‘Argus,’ and we always want to meet our star contributors.”

Miss Carter hesitated.

“Never mind your waist,” Helen urged tactfully. “It looks perfectly fresh to me, but you can keep your coat on if you’d rather.”

“All right, I’ll come,” said Miss Carter bravely.

And having yielded, she kept to the spirit, as well as the letter, of her promise. Jane, who was a very matter-of-fact young person, treated her with the same off-hand cordiality that she would have bestowed on any other chance acquaintance with interesting possibilities. The girls who stopped at the table to speak to Jane or Helen, smiled and nodded affably when they were introduced. Some of them stared a little, at the unusual combination of two prominent seniors and an obscure underclassman, but Miss Carter did not flinch. After dinner, when Jane had gone to speak to some friends at another table, she leaned forward toward her hostess. “I want to thank you,” she said shyly, “for telling me about yourself and for bringing me here. Do you know, I was going to leave college, but I’m not now. I’m going to stay on—and try jumping,” she ended quickly as Jane reappeared.

So Helen felt that her dinner had been a success, even though she should have to borrow largely from her next month’s meagre allowance to pay for it.

On her way through the campus she met Miss Raymond, hurrying to meet an important engagement. But she stopped to inquire about Miss Carter.

“I knew you’d manage it,” she said, when she had heard Helen’s brief story of her adventures. “You’re a person of resources. That’s why we wanted you on the ‘Argus’ board.”

Helen fairly danced the rest of the way to the Belden. “Perhaps I shan’t be afraid of her next time,” she thought. “I’d rather she’d say that than have sixty verses in the ‘Argus.’ Oh, what a selfish pig I was trying to be! I don’t deserve to have it all come out so beautifully. And—oh, dear, I’m late for the meeting of the house play committee, and Betty said it was awfully important.”

She found the committee in riotous and jubilant session in Madeline’s room.

“Three cheers for Sara Crewe!” shrieked Polly Eastman, when Helen appeared.

“Goodness, I’m not Sara,” gasped Helen.

“Oh, I mean the play, not the character,” explained Polly impatiently. “It’s going to be simply great. What do you suppose we’ve got now, Helen?”

“I don’t know,” said Helen, sitting down on the floor, since the bed and all the chairs were fully occupied.

“Well guess,” commanded Polly, tossing her a cushion.

“A lot of Turkish-looking things for Mr. Carrisford’s study.”

“Nonsense! We can get those all right when the time comes.”

“Josephine Boyd has learned her part.”

“Then she’s done a tall lot of work on it since last rehearsal,” said Polly serenely. “I’m sure I hope she has, but this is something any amount nicer.”

“Then I give up.”

“Well, it’s a monkey,” cried Polly triumphantly, “a real live monkey that belongs to a hand-organ man in Boston. The Italian bootblack at the station knows him, and—did he promise fair and square to get them up here, Lucile?”

“Fair and square,” repeated Lucile promptly. “I said we’d give him five dollars and his fare up from Boston. It’s well worth it. A cat would have been too absurd when everybody knows the story.”

“I hope Sara won’t mind carrying a live monkey across the stage,” said Betty. “I should be dreadfully afraid it would bite.”

“She ought to have thought of that when she took the part,” said Madeline. “She can’t flunk now.”

“Let’s hurry it through and have the organ-man play for a dance afterward,” suggested the ingenious Georgia Ames. “He’d surely throw that in for the five dollars.”

“Better have him play between the acts too,” put in somebody else. “There’s nothing like getting your money’s worth.”

“And we’ll pay him all in pennies,” added Polly gleefully. “We can take turns handing them out to the monkey. How many pennies will there be in five dollars and a fare from Boston, Lucile?”

Helen listened to their gay banter, wondering, as many thoughtful people have wondered before her, at the light-hearted abandon of these other girls. “It must be fun to be like that,” she reflected, “but I don’t believe I should want to change places with any of them. They only see their own little piece of things, and they don’t even know it’s little,—like the man who didn’t know anything about the forest he was walking through, because he got so interested in the trees. My tree is just a scraggly, crooked little sapling that won’t ever amount to much, but I can see the whole big forest, and hear it talk, and that makes up. I’m glad I’m one of the kind that college teaches to think,” ended Helen happily.

A moment later she made an addendum. “Betty Wales is a kind by herself,” she decided. “She doesn’t exactly think, but she knows. And she’s really responsible for to-day. I wish I could tell her about it.”