Title:  The Precipice

Author:  Elia Wilkinson Peattie

Release Date:  April 27, 2004 [EBook #12177]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK the precipice ***

Produced by Charles Aldarondo, Charlie Kirschner and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team.

THE PRECIPICE

A Novel

BY

ELIA W. PEATTIE

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY

The Riverside Press Cambridge

1914

A fanfare of trumpets is blowing to which women the world over are listening.  They listen even against their wills, and not all of them answer, though all are disturbed.  Shut their ears to it as they will, they cannot wholly keep out the clamor of those trumpets, but whether in thrall to love or to religion, to custom or to old ideals of self-obliterating duty, they are stirred.  They move in their sleep, or spring to action, and they present to the world a new problem, a new force—­or a new menace....

THE PRECIPICE

I

It was all over.  Kate Barrington had her degree and her graduating honors; the banquets and breakfasts, the little intimate farewell gatherings, and the stirring convocation were through with.  So now she was going home.

With such reluctance had the Chicago spring drawn to a close that, even in June, the campus looked poorly equipped for summer, and it was a pleasure, as she told her friend Lena Vroom, who had come with her to the station to see her off, to think how much further everything would be advanced “down-state.”

“To-morrow morning, the first thing,” she declared, “I shall go in the side entry and take down the garden shears and cut the roses to put in the Dresden vases on the marble mantelshelf in the front room.”

“Don’t try to make me think you’re domestic,” said Miss Vroom with unwonted raillery.

“Domestic, do you call it?” cried Kate.  “It isn’t being domestic; it’s turning in to make up to lady mother for the four years she’s been deprived of my society.  You may not believe it, but that’s been a hardship for her.  I say, Lena, you’ll be coming to see me one of these days?”

Miss Vroom shook her head.

“I haven’t much feeling for a vacation,” she said.  “I don’t seem to fit in anywhere except here at the University.”

“I’ve no patience with you,” cried Kate.  “Why you should hang around here doing graduate work year after year passes my understanding.  I declare I believe you stay here because it’s cheap and passes the time; but really, you know, it’s a makeshift.”