The weeks fled by, and Jeannette was carried along on an undiminished wave of excitement. Everything she coveted most in the world depended upon her winning a diploma from the school at the end of the ten weeks’ instruction. She discovered soon after her enrollment, that while this might be physically possible, it was rarely accomplished, and most of her fellow students had been attending the school for months. A diploma represented to her the measure of success, and as the time grew shorter before she was to take the final examinations, she could hardly sleep from the intensity of her emotions.
At home, matters had materially improved. The epidemic was over; Miss Loughborough’s school had reopened its doors, and Mrs. Sturgis was again beginning to fill her Wednesdays and Saturdays with lessons. But the problem of finances was still unsolved. There was a loan of five hundred dollars now on the insurance policy, and Jeannette foresaw her mother would not cease to fret and worry over that until it had somehow been paid back. Everything, it seemed to her, depended on her success at school. There was no hope for the little family otherwise. Alice--trusting, complacent little Alice--was not the type who could shoulder any of the burden; her mother was perceptibly not as strong as she had been. There would always be debts, there would always be worry, there would always be skimping and self-denial, unless she, Jeannette, got a job and went to work.
Weary with fatigue, she would drive herself at her practice on the rented typewriter in the studio every evening until her back flamed with fire and her fingertips grew sore. She made Alice read aloud to her while she filled page after page in her note-book with her hooks and dashes, until her sister drooped with sleep. Mrs. Sturgis protested, actually cried a little. The child was killing herself to no purpose! There wasn’t any sense in working so hard! She was wasting her time and it would end by their having a doctor!
Jeannette shook her head and held her peace, but when the reward came and old Roger Mason, who had been principal of the school for nearly twenty years, sent for her and told her he wanted to congratulate her on the excellent showing she had made, she felt amply compensated. But none of those who eagerly congratulated her,--not even her mother nor Alice,--suspected how infinitely harder than mastering her lessons had been what she had endured from the jeering, mimicking girls who had made fun of her through the dreadful ten weeks.