"The M.A.!" said Vera, in a tone of wonder.

"No; not to be intimate with a person you do not introduce to her, because you do not think she would consider him as on equal terms."

"Sister Beata quite approves," added Paula, sincerely, not guessing how little Sister Beata knew of the situation, of which she only heard through the medium of her own representations to Sister Mena.

The two girls rushed into the charms of these two Sisters, and the plan for an entertainment for the maidens of the Guild of St.

Milburgha, at which they were to a.s.sist. It lasted up to the gate of the Goyle, where Magdalen and Thekla were ready to meet them; and they trooped merrily up the hill, Agatha keeping to Magdalen's side in a way that struck her as friendly and affectionate. It seemed to be more truly coming HOME than the elder sister had dared to antic.i.p.ate; nor, indeed, did she feel the veiled antagonism to herself that had previously disappointed her.

The talk was about St. Robert's, about Oxford in general, the new friends, the princ.i.p.al, the games, the debates, the lectures, the sermons, the celebrities, the undergraduates, the concerts, the chapels, the boats, the architecture; all were touched on for further discussion by and by as they sat at the evening meal, and then on the chairs and cushions in the verandah; and through all there was no exclusion of the elder sister, but rather she was the one who could appreciate the interest of what Agatha had seen and heard; and even she was allowed to enter into the amus.e.m.e.nt of an Oxford bon mot, sometimes, indeed, when it was far beyond Paula and Vera.

There was no doubt that the term had much improved Agatha even in appearance and manner. She held herself better, p.r.o.nounced better, uttered no slangish expressions, and twice she repressed little discourtesies on the part of her sisters, and neglects such as were not the offspring of tender familiarity, but of an indifference akin to rudeness. Magdalen had endured, knowing how bad it was for their manners, but unwilling to become more of an annoyance than could be helped. The indescribable difference in Agatha's whole manner sent Magdalen to bed happier than she had been since the arrival of her sisters, and feeling as if Agatha had come to her own side of a barrier.

Perhaps it was quite true; for the last two months had been a time of growth with the maiden, changing her from a schoolgirl to a student, from the "brook to the river." She had, indeed, studied hard, but that she had always done, as being clever, intellectual and ambitious. The difference had been from her intercourse with persons slightly her elders, but who did not look on authorities as natural enemies, to be tolerated for one's own good. There had been a development of the conscience and soul even in this first term that made her regard her elder sister not merely with a sense of compulsory grat.i.tude and duty, but with sympathy and fellow feeling, which were the more excited when she saw her own chilliness of last spring carried further by the two young girls.

So breakfast went off merrily; and after the round of the garden and the pets, Agatha promised to come, when summoned, to hear how well Thekla could read French. In the meantime she waited in the morning- room, looking at her sisters' books; Vera pushed aside the Venetian blind.

"Don't come in that way, Flapsy!" called Paula. "You'll be heard in the dining-room, and the M.A. will tremble at your dusty feet."

"They aren't dusty," said Vera, pulling up the blind with a clatter.

"Aren't they?" laughed Paula, pointing.

"You had better go and wipe them," said Agatha.

"I don't believe in M.A.'s fidgets," returned Vera.

"But I do, in proper deference to the head of the house," said Agatha, gravely.

"Murder in Irish!" cried Vera, bouncing away, while Paula argued, "Really, Nag, life is not long enough to attend to all the M.A.'s little worries."

"Polly, dear, I am afraid we have been on a wrong tack with our sister. I don't like calling her by that name."

"You began it!" exclaimed Vera, dashing in by the door as she spoke.

"I could not have meant it as a nickname to be always in use."

"Oh yes, you did, I remember"--and an argument was beginning, which Agatha cut short by saying, "Any way, it is bad taste."

"Nag has been so much among the real M.A. that she is tender about their t.i.tle."

"She wants to be one herself," said Vera; "and so she will if she goes on getting learned and faddy."

"In both senses?" said Paula.

Agatha laughed a little, but added, "No, Polly, the thing is that it is hardly kind or right to put that sort of label upon a person like Magdalen--who has done so much for us--and--"

The perverse young hearts could not bear a touch on the chord of grat.i.tude; and Paula burst in, "Label or libel, do you mean?"

"It becomes a libel as you use it."

"Do you want us to call her sister or Magdalen, the whole scriptural mouthful at once?"

"I believe that to call her Magdalen or Maidie, as my father did, would make her feel nearer to us than the formal way of saying 'Sister.'"

"I don't mind about changing," said Paula. "She can never be the same to us as dear Sister Mena."

"She is so tiresome," added Vera. "She bothers so over my music; calling out if I make ever so small a slip, and making me go over all again."

"Well she may," said Paula. "She is making little Tick play so nicely. Just listen! But I can't bear her dragging us off to that horrid old Arns...o...b.. Church and the nasty stuffy Sunday school."

"That reminds me," said Agatha; "Gillian Merrifield met a relation of Mr. Earl's, who said that Miss Prescott had brought quite new life and spirit to the poor old man, who had been getting quite out of heart for want of any one to help and sympathise with him."

"Then he ought to make his services more Catholic," said Paula. "But nothing will wean her from the old parochial idea. Why, she would not let me give my winter stockings to Sister Beata's poor girls, but made me darn them and put them by."

"Yes, and mine, which were bad enough to give away, she made me darn first," cried Vera. "She is ever so much worse than the superlative about mending one's clothes."

"There ought to be another degree of comparison," said Paula,-- "Botheratissima!"

"For, only think!" said Vera. "She won't let us have new hats, but only did up the old ones, and not with feathers, though there is such a love at Tebbitts's at Rockstone."

"She says it is cruel," said Paula.

"Cruel to me, I am sure; and what difference does it make when the birds are once killed?"

"Well, she did give us those lovely wreaths of lilies," said Paula.

"Of course, but nothing to make them stylish! What's the good of being out if one is to have nothing chic? And she won't let me have a hockey outfit. She says she must see more of it to be able to judge whether to let us play!"

"That just means seeing whether her dear Merrifields do," said Paula.

"Gillian did at St. Catherine's. But you will know soon. Did I not hear something about a garden party?"

"Oh, yes; she is talking of one, but it will be all swells and croquet, and deadly dull."

"I thought you seemed to be getting on well with the swells, if you mean the Merrifields, especially Wilfred, if that is his name."

"Bil--Bil! Oh, he is all very well," said Vera, "if he would not be always so silly and come after me! As if I cared!"

"And only think," said Paula, "that she was going to have it on the very day that St. Milburga's Guild has their festival! Just as if it was on purpose!"

"Did you ask her to keep clear of your engagements?"

"I told her, but I don't think she listened." And as another grievance suggested itself to Vera, she declared, "And she won't let us join the Girls' Magazine Club, because she saw one she didn't like on somebody's table. As if we were little babies!"

"She won't let us order books at the library, but gets such awfully slow ones," chimed in Paula, "or only baby stories fit for Thekla.

She made me return that book dear Sister Mena lent me, because she said it was Roman Catholic."

"And hasn't she got Thomas a Kempis on her table? and I'm sure he was Roman Catholic. There's consistency!"