The Invader. Margaret L. Woods
in the room, amber hair and the tear-bedewed roses of a flushed young face. Suddenly Milly thrust the jars aside, seized the candle from the table, and, holding it near her face, looked intently, anxiously in the glass. The anxiety vanished in a moment, but not the intentness. She went on looking. Tims had always perceived Milly's beauty—which had an odd way of slipping through the world unobserved—but had never seen her look so lovely as now, her eyes wide and brilliant, and her upper lip curved rosily over a shining glimpse of her white teeth.
Beauty had an extraordinary fascination for Tims, poor step-child of nature! Now she stood looking at the reflection of Milly without noticing how in the background her own strange, wizened face peered dim and grotesque from the tarnished mirror, like the picture of a witch or a goblin behind the fair semblance of some princess in a fairy tale.
"I do remember myself partly," said Milly, doubtfully; "and yet—somehow not quite. I suppose I shall remember you and this queer place soon, if they don't put me into a mad-house at once."
"They sha'n't," said Tims, decisively. "Trust to me, M., and I'll see you through. But I'm afraid you'll have to give up all thought of your First."
"My what," asked Milly, turning round inquiringly.
"Your First Class, your place, you know, in the Final Honors School, Lit. Hum., the biggest examination of the lot."
"Do I want it very much, my First?"
"Want it? I should just think you do want it!"
Milly stared at the fire for a minute, warming one foot before she spoke again. Then:
"How funny of me!" she observed, meditatively.
CHAPTER IV
Tims's programme happened to be full on the following day, so that it was half-past twelve before she knocked at Milly's door and was admitted. Milly stood in the middle of the room in an attitude of energy, with her small wardrobe lying about her on the floor in ignominious heaps.
"Tell me, Tims," said Milly, after the first inquiries, "are those positively all the clothes I possess?"
"Of course they are, M. What do you want with more?"
"Are they in the fashion?" asked Milly, anxiously.
Tims stared.
"Fashion! Good Lord, M.! What does it matter whether you look the same as every fool in the street or not?"
"Oh, Tims!" cried Milly, laughing that pretty rippling laugh so strange in Tims's ears. "I was quite right when I made a mistake, you're just like a man. All the better. But you can't expect me not to care a bit about my clothes like you, you really can't."
Tims drew herself up.
"You're wrong, my girl, I'm a deal fonder of frocks than you are. I always think," she added, looking before her dreamily, "that I was meant to be a very good dresser, only I was brought up too economical." Generally speaking, when Tims had uttered one of her deepest and truest feelings, she would glance around, suddenly alert and suspicious to surprise the twinkle in her auditor's eye. But in the clear blue of Milly Flaxman's quiet eyes, she had ceased to look for that tormenting twinkle, that spark which seemed destined to dance about her from the cradle to the grave.
Presently she found herself hanging up Milly's clothes while Milly paid no attention; for she alternately stood before the glass in the dark corner, and kneeled on the hearth-rug, curling-tongs in hand. And the hair, the silky soft amber hair, which could be twisted into a tiny ball or fluffed into a golden fleece at will, was being tossed up and pulled down, combed here and brushed there, altogether handled with a zeal and patience to which it had been a stranger since the days when it had been the pride of the nursery. Tims the untidy, as one in a dream, went on tidying the room she was accustomed to see so immaculate.
"There!" cried Milly, turning, "that's how I wear it, isn't it?"
"Good Lord, no!" exclaimed Tims, contemplating the transformed Milly. "It suits you, M., in a way, but it looks queer too. The others will all be hooting if you go down-stairs like that."
Milly plumped into a chair irritably.
"How ever am I to know how I did my hair if I can't remember? Please do it for me."
Tims smiled sardonically.
"I'll lend you my hair," she said; "the second best. But do your hair! You really are as mad as a hatter."
Milly shrugged her shoulders.
"You can't? Then I keep it like this," she said.
An argument ensued. Tims left the room to try and find a photograph of Milly as she had been.
When she returned she found her friend standing in absorbed contemplation of a book in her hand.
"This is Greek, isn't it?" she asked, holding it up. Her face wore a little frown as of strained attention.
"Right you are," shrieked Tims in accents of relief. "Greek it is. Can you read it?"
"Not yet," replied Milly, flushing with excitement, "but I shall soon, I know I shall. Last night I couldn't make head or tail of the books. Now I understand right enough what they are, and I know some are in Greek and some in English. I can't read either yet, but it's all coming back gradually, like the daylight coming in at the window this morning."
"Hooray! Hooray!" shouted Tims. "You'll be reading as hard as ever in a week if I don't look after you. But see here, my girl, you've given me a nasty jar, and I'm not going to let you break your heart or crack your brain in a wild-goose chase. You can't get that First, you know; you're on a fairly good Second Class level, and you'd better make up your mind to stay there."
"A fairly good Second Class level!" repeated Milly, still turning the leaves of the book. "That doesn't sound very exhilarating—and I rather think I shall do as I like about staying there."
Tims began to heat.
"Well, that's what Stewart said about you. I don't believe I told you half plain enough what Stewart did say, for fear of hurting your feelings. He said you are a good scholar, but barring that, you weren't at all clever."
Milly looked up from her book; but she was not tearful. There was a curl in her lip and the light of battle in her eye.
"Stewart said that, did he? Now if I were a gentleman I should say—'damn his impudence'—and 'who the devil is Stewart'; but then I'm not. You can say it."
Tims stared. "Oh, come, I say!" she exclaimed. "I don't swear, I only quote. But my goodness, when you remember who Stewart is, you'll be—well, pained to think of the language you're using about him."
"Why?" asked Milly, her head riding disdainfully on her slender neck.
"Because he's your tutor and lecturer—and a regular tiptop man at Greek and all that—and you—you respect him most awfully."
"Do I?" cried Milly—"did perhaps in my salad days. I've no respect whatever for professors now, my good Tims. I know what they're like. Here's Stewart for you."
She took up a pen and a scrap of paper and dashed off a clever ludicrous sketch of a man with long hair, an immense brow, and spectacles.
"Nonsense!" said Tims; "that's not a bit like him."
She held the paper in her hand and looked fixedly at it. Milly had been wont seriously to grieve over her hopeless lack of artistic talent and she had never attempted to caricature. Tims was thinking of a young fellow of a college who had lately died of brain disease. In the earlier stages of his insanity, it had been remarked that he had an originality which had not been his when in a normal state. What if her friend were developing the same terrible disease? If it were so, it was no use fussing, since there was no remedy. Still, she felt a desperate need