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to win the prize away from all the upper class girls. I didn't vote for her. By-bye." "Oh!" exclaimed Adele, clasping her hands in that intense way of hers, "won't she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her mother will be delighted. Her mother will be proud." "Hist!" Jo's head reappeared. "She's coming down the corridor now. Red cheeks, bright eyes, ordinary nose, round chin, long braid, white shirtwaist, tan skirt--nothing but an average freshman. She doesn't look like a mathematical prodigy, but she is one. And an author, too--dear, dear! There must be some mistake. Authors never have curly hair." Adele and I poked our faces through the crack. Jo wickedly flung the door wide open. "Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering heroine comes," she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the buttons on her waist. Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous admiration. "O Maria Mitchell Kiewit," she declaimed, "hearken! I have the honor--me, myself--I snatch it, seize it--the honor to announce that thou--thee--you--your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!" She scrambled upright by means of clutching my skirt and put out a cordial hand. "Nice girl! Shake!" "Josephine!" gasped Adele in horrified rebuke. My breath was beginning to come fast over this insult to our editorial dignity when I caught sight of the freshman's face. Her cheeks were as red as ever, but she had turned white about the lips, and her eyes were really terrified. "Oh, I don't want it!" she cried involuntarily, shrinking away from us, "I don't want it." Jo's mouth fell open. "Then why in the world----" The little freshman fairly ran to the alleyway leading to her room. Jo turned blankly to us. "Then why in the world did she write the story and send it in?" Adele--I told you she was conscientious, didn't I? and inclined to be mathematical herself--stared at the spot where Maria had disappeared. "Such an attitude might be explained either by the supposition that she is diffident--sort of stunned by the surprise, you understand--she never expected to win. Or maybe she is shy and dre
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