The Bacillus of Beauty

"Good-by, Miss Winship," he said, holding open the gate for me. It was the first time that any one had addressed me by that grown-up title.

"Good-by, Billy."

And that was the end of the beginning of the Quest.

In blizzard time and through the fierce heat of summer I toiled at self- set tasks in our ugly, comfortable home. During the blessed intervals when we could induce "girl help" to stay with us I had scarcely any housework to do. Fairly regular exercise came to be a habit and I worried admiring relatives into thinking me a candidate for an early grave by taking a cold bath every morning. In the end I managed, with a single year in a cheerless boarding house near a village academy, where I studied greedily, devouring my books, to enter the State University with a scholarship to my credit.

I took half the examination in Spring and read extra Virgil and Ovid all summer. Then in August, when the long vacation was nearly over, came the village dressmaker. Ma had promised me two new dresses, and I would sit hemming towels or poring over Greek and Roman history while they turned the leaves of fashion magazines and discussed materials and trimmings.

I secretly hoped for a silk, but Mother, to whom I suppose I am even now-- now!--a little girl, vetoed that as too showy, and the dressmaker added her plea for good, durable things. The choice fell upon a golf suiting for school and a black cashmere for church.

I begged hard to have the cashmere touch the ground, but both women smiled at the folly of the child who forgot the many re-bindings a long skirt would call for. There was a comic side to my disappointment, for I guessed that the widow Trask could not make the designs I coveted, nor anything of which she could not buy a paper pattern.

But when I went up to the University and became entitled to join in the cry:-S!----U! We're----a----few! S!----T!----A--T--E! U!----ni----ver--si--tee! Wow!----Wow!----Wow!

--I found that I compared favourably enough with my mates. Dress played little part in every day college life, and for such occasions as socials or Friday night debating society I soon learned from upper class girls to mitigate ugly gowns with pretty ribbons. And I congratulated myself upon the fact that I was not by any means the plainest girl in my class. My face was hopeless, but my hard-won fight for an erect posture had given me a bearing that seemed almost distinguished. And--well, even my face wasn't so bad, I thought then!