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VASSAR STORIES 
 
VASSAR STORIES 
 
 GRACE MARGARET GALLAHER 
 
 With many Illustrations 
 From Photographs 
 
 Richard G. Badger & Co. 
 BOSTON 
 
 1900 
 
COPYRIGHT 1899 BY 
 RICHARD G. BADGER & Co. 
 
 All Rights Rexrved 
 
To '97 
 
 921501 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 
 
 PAGE 
 
 IN THE MATTER OF ROOM-MATES 3 
 
 THE MOULDERS OF PUBLIC OPINION .... 43 
 
 HER POSITION 67 
 
 A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 105 
 
 NEITHER A LENDER NOR A BORROWER BE . . 125 
 
 THE CLAN 165 
 
 AT THE FIRST GAME 221 
 
 ON BACCALAUREATE SUNDAY . . . . . . 239 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 THE DAISY FIELD Frontispiece. 
 
 SUNSET HI-LL facing page 44 
 
 THE ROAD TO SUNSET HILL . . " " 44 
 
 THE VASSAR LAKE " " 68 
 
 THE LIBRARY " " 106 
 
 THE LODGE " " 106 
 
 THE GLEN " " 126 
 
 THE MAIN BUILDING .... " " 168 
 
 THE OBSERVATORY " " 168 
 
 THE GYMNASIUM " " 200 
 
 WATCHING THE BASKET-BALL GAME " " 240 
 
 ON THE WAY TO THE CIRCLE . " " 240 
 
IN THE MATTER OF 
 ROOM-MATES 
 
In the Matter of Room- 
 mates 
 
 IT rained dismally the Saturday Ninety- 
 blank entered college. It was also cold. 
 There was a confusion about rooms, so half 
 the class were homeless till night, and a 
 carload of baggage got side-tracked near 
 Garrison. This would have depressed a 
 class with just an ordinarily hopeful dis- 
 position. But Ninety-blank was exuberant, 
 joyous, ecstatic, in its nature. It knew not 
 melancholy, neither fear. Such of it as 
 had been assigned a local habitation paddled 
 merrily back and forth between Main and 
 Strong, bearing both its lawfully acquired 
 possessions and those seized in raids on the 
 careless neighbor. Such of it as awaited 
 rooms made itself glad in the house of its 
 friends. Such of it as had sisters or school 
 friends in upper classes annexed college to 
 itself. 
 
VASSAR STORIES 
 
 A few members of the class, with neither 
 rooms, friends, nor the Ninety-blank cheer- 
 fulness, felt queer. Molly Omstead was 
 one of them. She sat on a window-sill on 
 the first corridor, watching the rainy night 
 close down over the campus and counting 
 the miles to Oakland, California, where the 
 rest of the Omstead family probably were 
 doing something pleasant just now. There 
 were a great many miles. Molly was just 
 realizing the number. Her trunk had been 
 brought over from Mrs. Norris' that morn- 
 ing, and was now adding its share to the 
 general confusion of the corridor. She 
 would have liked to get her coat out of 
 it, for large draughts floated about, but she 
 could not bring herself to unpack directly 
 in the public thoroughfare. She longed for 
 a room and a room-mate, especially the room- 
 mate. 
 
 For Molly was shy, in a brusque, boyish 
 sort of way. She wanted to be friends with 
 everybody, but she didn't just know how. 
 A room-mate would be a friend at once. 
 You cannot very well escape knowing a girl, 
 
ROOM-MATES 5 
 
 when you live in her pocket or she in yours. 
 Molly's sister had kept her first room-mate 
 the whole four years. They were still dear 
 friends'. Through your room-mate, too, you 
 grew to know other girls. 
 
 Molly watched the groups of girls hurry- 
 ing about the corridor, trying to guess who 
 was to belong to her. She had decided that 
 she would like the brown bun of a girl 
 whom several others, upper classmen evi- 
 dently, called Betty, when a slender, fair 
 one, who looked like an old miniature at 
 home, stopped to speak to a man moving a 
 trunk. Molly thought her the most inter- 
 esting person she had ever met, though she 
 said nothing but <c May I have my trunk 
 now, please ? " and directions where to take 
 it. When she told the man she had for- 
 gotten which floor she lived on, but the 
 number was sixty-nine, Molly's heart 
 bobbed about. She was a Freshman ! and 
 perhaps 
 
 Molly hurried off to the office to see if by 
 any chance she, too, lived in sixty-nine. No 
 room yet. She must wait. She wandered 
 
6 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 into Henriette Knight's room, the corridor 
 was getting so dark and homesick. Hen- 
 riette was a summer acquaintance who sud- 
 denly seemed to Molly, in her loneliness, a 
 valued friend. Her mother was helping her 
 settle her single, a slit in the second north 
 wall. Henriette, her mother, and the furni- 
 ture were all sizable affairs that sufficiently 
 crowded the tiny room without the addition 
 of a tall, broad-shouldered girl. They were 
 good to Molly, however, and tried not to 
 make her feel in the way. " Don't move, 
 please, we can pass you." " Just bend for- 
 ward one instant, this book-case must go 
 there." " If you could sit a little further 
 over, we could put the desk in that corner." 
 Molly stayed till it became a question of 
 her going out or the bureau not coming in. 
 
 She hunted up a Senior who had known 
 her sister when the latter was a Senior and 
 the former a Freshman. She was not in. 
 Her room was held by strange girls, who 
 sat on trunks, the floor, and one another, 
 and who were so loftily indifferent to one 
 Freshman more or less that Molly hurried 
 
ROOM-MATES 7 
 
 away lest the thought of her own minute- 
 ness in the scheme of Vassar overcome her 
 utterly. 
 
 The reading-room looked literary, but not 
 exactly homelike, the library was unfriendly, 
 and the college parlors distinctly hostile. 
 Molly sought the office for the sixth time 
 that afternoon, this time not in vain. Some 
 one handed her a key, saying, " You are to 
 room in number sixteen, Main, and your 
 room-mate is a Freshman." 
 
 Those who have never roomed in sixteen, 
 north Main well, let them give thanks. 
 It is a double. Molly had heard of a 
 "shoot." Her first glance into the long, 
 narrow, dark room convinced her that no 
 such brisk title applied. A crawl was the 
 pace at which that room would have travelled. 
 There seemed to be a paucity of chairs, in- 
 deed of furniture of any kind, and the walls 
 had a spotty appearance. But the room- 
 mate had come. Nothing else mattered. 
 
 She sat close to the window in a huddled 
 position, suggestive of chills and tears. 
 Molly lighted the gas. Then she wished 
 
8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 she had left the room dark. It was such a 
 blow ! The room-mate was moist, and dank, 
 and crumpled, and crumbly in all sorts of 
 unexplainable ways. Molly's perceptions 
 were not keen, yet even she knew at once 
 that the room-mate was an impossible per- 
 son. A big, rosy, vigorous girl herself, she 
 shuddered at the unwholesome little creature 
 before her. She was so " 'umble " when 
 Molly began to talk to her that the latter 
 named her " Uriah Heep " at once. " Miss 
 Stowe " was her right name, " Carrie Stowe, 
 if you like." 
 
 "Just as if," wrote Molly to her sister 
 that night, " I didn't like, she'd get a new 
 one." 
 
 Molly described Miss Stowe further as 
 " a loathsome beast, and cries without any 
 pocket handkerchief." She said much more 
 about her the next day, and the next, for 
 Molly, after the manner of Freshmen, the 
 first half of the year wrote a letter home 
 every day, a fat one that took two postage 
 stamps. Later, the letters were less fre- 
 quent, and were something like this : 
 
ROOM-MATES 9 
 
 Dear Peops, O.K. Hope you are. Grand 
 weather. Awfully busy. Wish I could see you. 
 Stacks and hoards of love. MOLLY. 
 
 P.S. Do you think grandma would think me a 
 nervy cit if I send her my stockings to be darned ? 
 
 P.S. No. 2. Please send jny winter flannels. I'm 
 perishing. And, say, can't you wrap up some buns and 
 jam in them ? 
 
 These letters were usually on the back of 
 a hygiene written lesson, whose front bore 
 strange devices of lungs, lights, and livers, 
 or of an algebra paper that looked as if 
 some one had sprinkled it with red ink. 
 
 The Omsteads in Oakland, California, 
 grieved over these and said, " She is being 
 weaned from home. She doesn't show any 
 interest in the fire in the north wing, and 
 she hasn't even mentioned old Mrs. Dent's 
 death." This was not true. Molly loved 
 home just as much as ever, and in the coming 
 vacation she would listen enthralled to the 
 feats of daring performed by her family in 
 the fire or to the minutest happenings among 
 the clan. 
 
 She had entered a world of such absorb- 
 
io VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ing interest that nothing outside of it could 
 touch her. College may be a small world 
 and a narrow one, but while a girl lives 
 in it she neither knows nor desires any 
 other. The fall of the Chinese Empire 
 moves not a whit her who is striving with 
 all her might to bring about the fall of a too 
 ambitious office-seeker in her own class ; and 
 Cecil Rhodes's speech on imperialism leaves 
 cold a heart hot with rage over Prexy's last 
 chapel talk on the powers of the Faculty. 
 Should it not be so ? A girl has all her life 
 to live in the world without, but only four 
 short years in college. And, too, it is all 
 her own. The " Olympians," to whose num- 
 ber she herself will be added appallingly 
 soon, are responsible for the outside world, 
 but she alone can make or mar college. 
 
 By chapel time Molly had found out that 
 Uriah Heep used hair oil, said "considerable 
 few," read any letters left unlocked, besides 
 having other even more unpleasant cus- 
 toms. Nevertheless, she was nice to the 
 room-mate and the room-mate liked her at 
 once. Every one did. 
 
ROOM-MATES n 
 
 "Is there something queer about me ? " 
 she once asked a friend. " All the Objec- 
 tionables attach themselves to me. It 
 alarms me." 
 
 "Just snub them good once or twice," 
 said the friend. 
 
 " Oh ! " said Molly. 
 
 The Objectionables continued to cling. 
 
 Uriah Heep fastened herself to Molly in 
 a limp, clammy sort of way, and would not 
 be detached. They went together to chapel. 
 Who ever forgets the first chapel ? The 
 narrow room seems immense and filled with 
 thousands of girls. They are all pretty, 
 radiant, happy girls, too, who never knew 
 a first day, nor were ever friendless Fresh- 
 men. The tired, the unhappy, the disagree- 
 able ones make no impression the first 
 night. This is right, for they are the minor- 
 ity. And when they all stand up to sing ! 
 Six hundred girls* voices singing " Jerusa- 
 lem the Golden " or " Abide with Me." 
 Who does not remember that odd, new feel- 
 ing of being part of a great army of youth 
 and courage which must vanquish the old, 
 
12 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 evil things of the world ? It is a dim per- 
 ception, gone in a breath, and yet does not 
 its effect stay forever ? As the hymn ended 
 in a low Amen, Molly sank on her knees 
 for the prayer. 
 
 "Are you a Catholic?" shrilled Uriah 
 Heep in her ear. 
 
 The next day, Sunday, they went to 
 church together; they dined together; they 
 walked together ; they talked together ; they 
 walked together again. Then Molly escaped 
 to Henriette for rest and fresh air. When 
 she returned, Uriah Heep reproached her, 
 weeping. 
 
 " I thought you'd deserted me." 
 
 Molly took her, by way of making atone- 
 ment, to supper with the Seniors, though 
 only she herself had been invited and she 
 blushed with shame to seem so fresh. The 
 rest of the evening she read the Bible to 
 Uriah, because the latter disapproved of 
 " novels " on Sunday. This put Uriah to 
 sleep, which would have been a blessing if it 
 had not done the same for Molly. 
 
 The morning allotment of classes put 
 
ROOM-MATES 13 
 
 Uriah in Molly's sections. That delighted 
 young person planned her day so that every 
 minute of it should be passed in Molly's 
 society. 
 
 Once only did Molly escape. She went 
 with Henriette to put the latter's mother 
 on the cars. While they waited at the 
 Lodge, they watched the joy with which 
 the motor-man banged his bell at intervals, 
 so that dignified professors and slow-pacing 
 students might jump, and run, and fall all 
 over themselves to catch a car not going for 
 ten minutes yet. Henriette's brother, who 
 had appeared to assist at the unpacking after 
 everything was unpacked, was making Molly 
 promise him a number of dances at Phil, and 
 Molly was thinking, " he's the last man-body 
 I shall see in weeks," but without sorrow, for 
 Vassar's all-sufficiency was working within 
 her, when some one squeezed in between 
 them and a breathless voice gasped, 
 
 " I've looked everywhere for you." 
 
 It was Uriah Heep. 
 
 For five weeks Molly lived as did the 
 Siamese twins. Then the Limpet Molly 
 had rechristened her announced, 
 
i 4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " I'm going to room with Abby Whitely." 
 
 The young woman named was an obscure 
 member of the class, who had acquired fame 
 by translating " deos pietatepropitiant " " they 
 appease the gods with a pie." 
 
 " Does she know you ? " asked Molly, 
 feeling that otherwise Miss Abby must be 
 warned, 
 
 " Oh, yes, we meet in Gyms." 
 
 Molly had steadily cut Gyms, as it was 
 her only chance for freedom. She did not 
 inquire by what method the pie girl had 
 disposed of her former room-mate, but 
 awaited with a thankful heart the coming of 
 the new inmate of number sixteen, Miss 
 Hildegarde Huntington, a Special from one 
 of the cottages. 
 
 "Her name's agin' her," she thought, 
 "but any one's better than that grewsome 
 Limpet." 
 
 Miss Hildegarde's arrival was preceded by 
 that of a trunk of drummer-like size. Molly 
 and her neighbors speculated on its contents. 
 
 " Paris gowns," suggested one. " Her 
 name sounds as if she were a terrible dressy 
 bit." 
 
ROOM-MATES 15 
 
 But she was not. At least, not on first 
 appearance. She was a comfortable contrast 
 to the bedraggled Limpet, however, being 
 lively, independent, and as crisp as a fresh 
 apple. 
 
 " No, thank you," in answer to Molly's 
 offer of assistance in unpacking. "I have 
 very few clothes, they hamper the mind/' 
 
 She whisked a few garments out of the 
 trunk, and shut down the lid. 
 
 " Lawk ! what's in there ? " thought Molly, 
 " it's uncanny like." 
 
 " My collection of biology specimens," 
 said Hildegarde just as if Molly had spoken ; 
 it had a sort of Alice in Wonderland effect, 
 " I collected them at Woods Holl last sum- 
 mer." She began to exhume various large 
 jars carefully swathed in cotton. " My set 
 of frogs," as if they were shirt-studs, " six 
 young toads ; my rattlesnake, what's the 
 matter?" 
 
 " Take them away ! Take them away ! 
 The nasty things ! " 
 
 " They're dead, child, I killed them my- 
 self last summer." 
 
16 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " What do I care if they are ! It's the 
 sight Oh, don't!" 
 
 Hildegarde was prodding the most loathy 
 frog with her fingers. 
 
 " If you knew how silly a great, grown-up 
 girl like you looks hopping about and shriek- 
 ing, you'd never do it again," said the scien- 
 tist with perfect calm, " but of course if you 
 don't like them I'll shut them up. I hope 
 you'll take Junior biology, you need it to 
 give you balance." 
 
 Molly's golf boots were clumping down 
 the corridor, so she did not hear. She had 
 gone to tell her friends that she had a 
 delirium tremens outfit in her room, and 
 that there were worse things even than hav- 
 ing one's letters read. 
 
 In the evening when Molly returned to 
 make peace with the enraged biologist she 
 found Hildegarde had forgotten the whole 
 affair in a properly controlled joy over 
 somebody's new psychology. 
 
 Molly was sorely puzzled over this room- 
 mate. She was perfectly good-tempered al- 
 ways, and helpful in all difficulties, yet she 
 
ROOM-MATES 17 
 
 would not let the simplest remark pass 
 unchallenged, and she would argue far into 
 the night on whether one should get out 
 of bed backwards or sideways. Molly was 
 happily too ignorant of the guild to know 
 that Hildegarde was a person with a mission 
 to reform the world. There are many 
 such among the young of both sexes. They 
 either go into Settlements, where the sur- 
 rounding populace is so used to being ex- 
 perimented upon that it takes no harm, write 
 a book which no one is obliged to read, or 
 " accept their possibilities," or " their limita- 
 tions," or whatever the expression is, and 
 become honored and useful members of 
 society. Those, however, who live with 
 them while they are making up their minds 
 what they will be, suffer many and strange 
 things. 
 
 Molly, who was sweet-spirited and joyous, 
 bore with cheerfulness Hildegarde's "im- 
 personal criticism," though she wondered 
 how it could be much more personal, but 
 the arguments wore on her. Hildegarde 
 would argue Monday morning, c< when just 
 
T8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 to be alive is misery, and to have mathe- 
 matics is very death," on predestination ver- 
 sus freewill. She would argue afternoons 
 when Molly came in glowing from basket 
 ball, mindless to aught save a bath and a 
 nap, on Unitarianism versus Congregation- 
 alism. She would argue evenings, when the 
 room was filled with burblers eager for fun 
 and fudges, on imperialism versus the rights 
 of the native to the soil. Worst of all, she 
 would argue on Sundays, when the chances 
 of escaping one's room-mate are at their 
 lowest, on duty, and right, and religion. 
 
 Molly was a healthy, normal girl of eigh- 
 teen, consequently she had few ideas on any 
 subject. She first stared at Hildegarde, 
 then laughed, then grew sullen under the 
 ceaseless worry of having to say something 
 on every subject and then defend that some- 
 thing to the death. She called Hildegarde 
 various evil names, to her face, for " the power 
 of the tongue " descended upon her in her 
 infrequent rages, all of which Hildegarde 
 received with unchanging calm, merely re- 
 marking, "Now, don't get heated," or 
 
ROOM-MATES 19 
 
 "Vituperation is not argument." Molly 
 lived in her friends' rooms and longed for 
 vacation. 
 
 The trip to Mohonk brought about the 
 eviction of this room-mate. 
 
 Somewhere in the gray of a cold October 
 morning a gong sounded clamorously. 
 Girls began calling to one another, 
 "Where's my cape ?" "Will I need rub- 
 bers ? " and big " busses " barges they 
 call them in Poughkeepsie began to rum- 
 ble under the porte-cochere. Molly mur- 
 mured to herself " Mohonk," and turned 
 over to sleep. By nine o'clock she would 
 be grief-smitten to have stayed at home. 
 Just now, however, all motive power was 
 dead. Some one dragged her up, brushed 
 her hair with vigor, buttoned her boots as 
 if they belonged to an enemy, and bundled 
 her, still half asleep, into one of the busses. 
 
 " Hildegarde is an old peach, after all," 
 thought Molly as the cold air waked her up. 
 " I'd never be here if she hadn't hustled 
 things up so. I'll argue all day to-morrow 
 on duty to the world or development of the 
 
20 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 individual soul the highest motive." This 
 was Hildegarde's choicest theme. 
 
 The sky was an Indian red with the after- 
 glow of sunset as the barges rolled up the 
 driveway. Molly stumbled out of hers stiff 
 from the forty-mile drive, dead tired from 
 the day on the mountains, dirty, sunburned, 
 and gorgeously happy. It was not the good 
 outdoor day that leaped and shouted in her 
 blood. It was the just born feeling that she 
 was a member of Vassar College and of the 
 class of Ninety-blank. Some girls seem to 
 have college spirit from the moment they 
 pass under the Lodge, others have to have 
 it fired within them by some especial 
 occasion. 
 
 Molly had sung for the first time, 
 
 "Here's a long life to Vassar, 
 
 Wave we her flag unfurled ! 
 Nothing shall e'er surpass her, 
 Queen of the college world." 
 
 And 
 
 "There's only one college in the world for me, 
 One Alma Mater, and that is V. C." 
 
 Then, led by the Seniors, the old, old 
 
ROOM-MATES 21 
 
 '*An institution once there was of learning and of 
 
 knowledge, 
 
 Which had upon its high brick front Vassar Female 
 College." 
 
 And 
 
 "If I were President, 
 I'd be non resident, 
 And all my energies should be spent 
 In planning for merriment/' 
 
 She had sung class songs, too, extempo- 
 rized by the class poet, songs of doubtful 
 metre but undoubted loyalty. She had 
 cheered for the class and for every member 
 in it till she could cheer no more because 
 her voice was only a croak. She had shared 
 her cape on the cold drive home with the 
 tall Canadian, sat with her arm around the 
 shoulders of the pretty Chicago girl, and 
 talked class politics with the clever girl from 
 New Orleans. She wanted to grab some 
 one and jump up and down and shout. 
 
 cc Oh, don't you love old College, and 
 Ninety-blank, and everything! " 
 
 She contented herself with calling " Good- 
 bye, Belle," "Goodbye, Janet," to girls 
 
22 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 whom that morning she had spoken to as 
 Miss This and Miss That. She slammed 
 down the corridor, flung open her door, 
 and cast herself on the couch, crying exult- 
 antly, if hoarsely, 
 
 " Bully for Mohonk ! " 
 
 " I wonder/' said Hildegarde Huntington, 
 tc if both could be measured, which would 
 be found to be the greater, the pain or the 
 pleasure of life. I think the pain, don't 
 you ? " 
 
 Molly sprang up. 
 
 "I don't anything! I know I've got to 
 move out, or else you have. I can't stand 
 any more philosophy, and philology, and 
 psychology, and all those other borey things 
 you dote on." 
 
 " I agree with you," said Hildegarde, the 
 placid. " You need a girl of your own im- 
 mature kind, and I certainly need one who 
 can talk with me." 
 
 Thereupon she sought another room, and 
 with Hildegarde to seek anything meant to 
 find it always. 
 
 Molly's perceptions in regard to room- 
 
ROOM-MATES 23 
 
 mates seemed blunted after this. Another 
 cottager succeeded Hildegarde. The new 
 girl was lovely in Molly's eyes because she 
 could not argue if she tried. When she left 
 because of illness, Molly grieved sincerely. 
 The fourth room-mate was as entertaining as 
 a play, but she considered College a land 
 where it is always afternoon, and, the Faculty 
 having other views on the subject, she de- 
 parted before the Finals. The fifth had a 
 parrot and " a tendency to throw things 
 when violent, and that frequent." Molly's 
 friends, foreseeing murder or nervous pros- 
 tration for her, secured a single for the 
 room-mate. The sixth was " an earnest 
 student," who couldn't stand company or 
 noise. 
 
 It was during the reign of this last that the 
 spring drawing for rooms took place. If 
 there is any suspense like that which pre- 
 cedes the drawing for rooms, may the 
 writer be spared it ! At least one hundred 
 out of every class must have singles. Their 
 lives will be blighted else. As there are 
 only twenty-seven singles allotted each class, 
 
24 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 much sorrow is inevitable. After all the 
 parlors and doubles have been drawn, half 
 of them by people who don't want them, a 
 few girls still remain roomless, clasping 
 blanks with tragic faces. This does not 
 mean that these luckless ones will have no 
 rooms at all, but they cannot be convinced 
 that night that college has any use or place 
 for them. It is not especially cheerful, at 
 the best, to be assigned a room and a room- 
 mate, or to be poked into a parlor to fill it 
 up. The scenes in the corridor after the 
 drawing are dismal. 
 
 A hubbub of voices sounded in the lecture- 
 room the night of the drawing. A shout 
 greeted Molly as she entered, above which 
 Sally Dean's voice could be heard. 
 
 " O Mary Ann, we've whacked up a 
 deal, Lou, Sarah, Barbara Sterling, and I, so 
 you'll get your single. We're going into a 
 firewall. Three of us will draw for it, that's 
 enough, and one can draw for you." 
 
 " But no one can draw for me, Sal." 
 
 " Not right for you, but if she gets it 
 then we'll take you in the firewall, and you 
 can exchange back into the single, see? " 
 
ROOM-MATES 25 
 
 " E-r yes, I reckon so." But Molly 
 didn't see at all. 
 
 "If you neither of you get singles, you 
 can draw for doubles, and exchange into " 
 
 " Don't listen to her, Molly," interrupted 
 another girl, " she's growing feeble-minded 
 over room permutations and combinations. 
 Do you think we'll all make for Strong the 
 way the Sophomores did ? " 
 
 " I hope not ! " cried a third. " I love 
 old Main." 
 
 <c Have you heard about the Sophomores ? 
 That Von Beck crowd, those fierce girls that 
 live around me, have drawn all the good 
 rooms. They've gone to Strong in a wad. 
 Kate Palubits, May Herrick, and the rest of 
 them, are furious because they're fobbed off 
 with those tucked-up places in Fifth Centre 
 and the Towers." 
 
 " Last year," it was a pompous little girl 
 who spoke, " my sister had just two choices, 
 an excellent room in Strong, and a wretched 
 little one on First. She selected the little 
 one because she thought all her friends were 
 to be there, too. Then all the rooms were 
 
26 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 changed about so she found herself entirely 
 alone, no one she knew nearer than Fourth." 
 
 " Think how forlorn ! " 
 
 " I guess I know," spoke up a girl who 
 was balancing on the back of a seat. " I call 
 my house Lonesomehurst, nobody for miles 
 but Seniors. They're so wrapped up in 
 their own might, majesty, and dominion, 
 they don't know I exist, even." 
 
 " If any one gets a single, it's just got 
 to be you, Molly Omstead, you've been 
 chivied about by room-mates long enough." 
 Barbara Sterling put her arm around Molly 
 and hugged her. She had been through a 
 queer room-mate experience herself. 
 
 " Do you know, girls, people think I'm 
 such a oner nobody can live with me. I 
 heard that Miss Mapes in our class say, 
 c Six room-mates in one year is really sus- 
 picious.' ' Molly's voice was plaintive. 
 
 "So it is. So it is, Miss Molly. We 
 all think so." Sally Dean hugged Molly's 
 neck till she pulled her hair down. 
 
 "That Miss Mapes " began Barbara, 
 but Betty Blake cut in with, 
 
ROOM-MATES 27 
 
 " If I don't get a room and am put in 
 with any one, it's going to be the Mother of 
 the Gracchi, I feel it in my bones. Look 
 at her, doesn't she have the most virtuous 
 Roman matron air ? and that ( coiffure,' as 
 she calls it, don't you know Cordelia wore 
 one just like it? " 
 
 " Perhaps you mean Cornelia, if you refer 
 to Mrs. Gracchus' first name. I don't mind 
 her hair as much as I do her habit of stop- 
 ping you and saying : c Isn't it wonderful ! 
 strange ! mysterious ! ' c What ? ' c Oh, life, 
 nature, eternity/ I think she lacks several 
 portions of gray matter, myself," said Bar- 
 bara. 
 
 " I'd rather have her than that Miss 
 Sands. What do you think she told me 
 the other day? ( I'm immoral and I am 
 proud of it,' " said Molly. 
 
 " Don't start such a scandalous report," 
 laughed Barbara. " She said she was un- 
 moral. There's a slight difference between 
 them." 
 
 "Well, I don't " but the entrance of 
 Mrs. Kendrick, with the urn of fate, other- 
 
28 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 wise a black silk bag, stopped further con- 
 versation. 
 
 Molly looked around the room. Every 
 girl, from Georgia Oberley, who was such a 
 grind she hadn't even a picture on her wall 
 for fear it should distract her mind, to Sally 
 Dean, who lived in the corridors, wore an 
 anxious look. So much hung on the event. 
 Outsiders may say that on a girl's physical 
 and mental strength depends her college 
 success. Not a bit of it. It is on her 
 room and her room-mate. 
 
 Molly went first. She drew a blank three 
 times ! No room of her own ! A room- 
 mate ! On the stairs and in the corridors 
 girls were storming at their bad luck or 
 silently making an effort to " grin and bear 
 it," according to their natures. Here and 
 there a group close drawn around a figure 
 marked the effort to hide the collapse of 
 some once hopeful spirit. Molly tramped 
 downstairs, into the cool spring night. Her 
 disappointment was a bitter one. She wanted 
 to get outdoors with it. 
 
 The Sophomore room was a Tower, one 
 
ROOM-MATES 29 
 
 with pink paper and a red carpet, but the 
 room-mate was soothingly neutral. To be 
 sure, she irritated Molly by her lack of class 
 spirit, as when she had a chance to learn the 
 secret of the Trig ceremonies, but declined 
 because she was " too busy " to take time to 
 hear it told, and when she refused to go to a 
 class meeting where every vote counted, say- 
 ing, "It doesn't matter to me who's elected." 
 It all mattered terribly to Molly from class 
 president to new history note-books, for 
 wasn't it a part of College ? and wasn't Col- 
 lege the world ? 
 
 However, she was amiable, liked to be by 
 herself, took quantities of baths, and had 
 other agreeable traits, some one of which 
 had been lacking in the other room-mates. 
 Molly really missed her when she was forced 
 to go home in December. 
 
 The never-failing cottage supply sent up a 
 Freshman to fill the vacancy. This Fresh- 
 man was bright, interesting, and nice. In 
 three weeks Molly hated the very sound of 
 her little boots. She would have worked for 
 a change, had not pride restrained her. Other 
 
30 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 people besides the disagreeable Miss Mapes 
 might think her a " oner/' 
 
 "So for a season they fought it fair, 
 
 She and his cousin May, 
 Talented, tactful, debonair, 
 Decorous foes were they " 
 
 in public. In private there was nothing 
 either decorous or debonair about their 
 methods. 
 
 Molly, in looking back on the year, could 
 never account for its unhappiness. Perhaps 
 it was because Mediaeval History and Trig 
 got on her nerves. She had never supposed 
 she possessed those last till after she had 
 spent hours, precious hours which belonged 
 to skating and golf, in quest of the three 
 sources of the Holy Roman Empire, or in 
 locating forty-eight angles in various quad- 
 rants, " left to the ingenuity of the student." 
 
 She longed, hoped, prayed for a single. 
 " But it's just my luck to get left again." 
 She fell to watching all the Objectionables of 
 the class, thinking, " Which one'll I get next 
 year?" 
 
ROOM-MATES 31 
 
 However, Ganesh, god of Luck, is some- 
 times as inconsistent as though he were a 
 goddess. Molly drew third choice in singles, 
 and a great repast at Smith's was the celebra- 
 tion thereof. 
 
 The single was not much to look at. The 
 washstand had to be removed to the corri- 
 dor every night if she wished room to go to 
 bed without peril, and the paper and the 
 curtains said rude things to one another. 
 Molly thought it a beautiful room. She 
 revelled in it. She even forsook her real 
 home, the great outdoors, for three whole 
 days in order to furnish it worthily. She 
 sat up till two and slept till ten, piled all her 
 belongings in the middle of the floor, cooked 
 agreeable foods at strange hours, had a " sub- 
 scription ball," five cents a head, twice a week, 
 in order that she might make really true to her 
 herself her independence. Most of all she 
 enjoyed just the aloneness of it all. Each 
 of her room-mates had possessed the vice 
 in Molly's eyes of being always in the 
 room. She sometimes wondered if they ever 
 went to any lectures. She could never re- 
 
32 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 member entering the room without rinding a 
 room-mate there. Now a beautiful silence 
 and solitude could be all her own whenever 
 she chose to hang out " Asleep," " En- 
 gaged " was no protection to her. Some- 
 times she hid herself behind that barricade, 
 stretched herself on her couch, and let the 
 aloneness soak way into her. 
 
 One October night, a month after college 
 opened, Molly walked over to Strong, col- 
 lecting girls as she went. The Juniors were 
 on the steps of Strong, singing. Molly did 
 not sing much herself: she always liked 
 to be where there was any noise being made, 
 however. 
 
 It was Friday night. The lecturer on 
 "Some Aspects of" something had kindly 
 remained at home. The air was as mild as 
 August. Every one felt idle and jolly. 
 
 Junior year is the happiest one of the 
 whole college four. The long pull and the 
 strong pull of the first two years is over. 
 The dullest student knows that, unless of 
 wanton choice, she need never grind again. 
 It is the time to work leisurely and pleas- 
 
ROOM-MATES 33 
 
 urely over some subject that especially inter- 
 ests you, and to find out what you are good 
 at. It is the time, too, to take long rambles 
 about the country, to explore the hidden, 
 pretty parts of the campus, to make ac- 
 quaintance with the approachable members 
 of the Faculty, to get up close to your class, 
 and to make life-long friendships, the 
 time, in short, to do all the things which 
 make Vassar Vassar and not, as it is called 
 in the prayers of the visiting clergy, " an in- 
 stitution of learning." The bustle and im- 
 portance of Sophomore year are over, the 
 responsibility and Ethics of Senior yet to be. 
 The Juniors are no account in the estimation 
 of the college. The Juniors are more than 
 willing. They are idle, careless, jolly, and 
 happy. 
 
 The Juniors, sitting on Strong steps, un- 
 derstood all this, even if they had never 
 thought it out. They sang rejoicefully, their 
 arms around one another's necks, their heads 
 resting on each other's shoulders. Some one 
 had a mandolin, some one else a banjo. A 
 few had good voices, the others did well as 
 
34 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 padding. Between the songs everybody 
 talked, and laughed, and joked. Occasion- 
 ally the leader, who had a mind always 
 bent on thoroughness, scolded because they 
 laughed in the midst of a song or didn't 
 sing well. When other songs failed, some 
 one would strike up America's new national 
 hymn, " There'll be a hot time in the old 
 town." 
 
 A girl was singing behind Molly. Her 
 voice was only a pipe, but it had a pathos 
 in it that " touched you where you live.'* 
 Molly turned her head to see the singer. 
 It was Georgia Oberley. Georgia was the 
 typical grind, pale, worn, and nervous. No 
 one knew her. In her Junior year her class 
 were still calling her Miss Oberley. Molly 
 had sat beside her in class by reason of 
 alphabetical arrangement, and had found her 
 nice about lending paper, pencils, and other 
 necessities. Molly always caught a class on 
 the fly, so to speak, as she ran in from skat- 
 ing or basket ball, and so never was fur- 
 nished with the munitions of war. Georgia 
 had a pleasant face. She dressed artistically, 
 
ROOM-MATES 35 
 
 too, in a quiet way. Molly herself never 
 felt at ease except in a high-collared shirt 
 waist and a tie bought by her brother, 
 " because girls don't get the right kind," 
 yet she liked the way Georgia harmonized 
 with her clinging wools and soft muslins. 
 
 " What are you doing here ? " she asked 
 at the end of the song. 
 
 " Singing," answered Georgia with a smile 
 for the bluntness of the question. Then, as 
 if some explanation really were due, " I have 
 a headache. I hoped the air would do me 
 good. I've got to cut deep over Greek." 
 
 "I kept up my Latin," said Molly, at 
 which some one, overhearing her, began to 
 murmur a verse from the Vassarian : 
 
 "Lullaby, oh, lullaby, 
 
 Now the Latin hour is nigh. 
 Know your lesson ? No, not I. 
 Those who work the sooner die, 
 Lullaby, oh, lullaby." 
 
 They sang again. Then some one re- 
 membered she was due at a spread, some 
 one else that her friend had a guest, and 
 
36 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 others recalled different engagements. So 
 the singing broke up. 
 
 " Come to walk a bit," said Molly, her 
 hand on Georgia's shoulder. She did not 
 know why she asked her. Georgia's startled 
 nod did not surprise her. She pitied the 
 girl, somehow, she looked so tired and 
 lonely. 
 
 " That's my nice old house," said the big 
 Junior as they passed a corner of Main. 
 
 " You don't mean to burn up a professor," 
 the little Junior pointed to the dark window. 
 The other laughed at the old saying that if 
 the girls would save on the gas bills College 
 might have another member on the Faculty. 
 
 " I don't care about any professor," said 
 Molly. " I don't like to use up the good 
 air in the room. I always open the window, 
 too." 
 
 "You can. You live alone." 
 
 " Helloa," said Molly, stopping in the 
 path, " are you stuck with a room-mate ? 
 You know I had the seven plagues of Egypt 
 in my room." She laughed, for her troubles 
 never embittered her. 
 
ROOM-MATES 37 
 
 Georgia looked up at the round, brown 
 face so far above hers. She remembered 
 hearing the girls quote Kipling's remark 
 about Californians to Molly, " hearts as big 
 as their boots." She had a kind voice, this 
 girl like a boy, and her wide-apart gray eyes 
 were candid, like a child's. Georgia felt a 
 great longing to confide in some one. 
 
 " It's awful, Miss Omstead," she burst 
 out, " 1 can't stand my life here. I'm not 
 like most of the girls, I don't care for 
 parties, or athletics, or the class, or any of 
 the things they get so excited about. I just 
 want to study. That's what I came for and 
 I love it. I have to, of course. I'm going 
 to teach, and I need all the honors and 
 prizes I can get. You know outsiders set 
 so much more value on those things than we 
 do," deprecatorily. 
 
 " I'd think a heap of them, too, if I could 
 ever get one," said honest Molly. 
 
 " I think I'm a real student. I can study 
 and study weeks on just one little fine point." 
 
 " Like the Latin professor who specialized 
 on the first declension and when he died 
 
3 8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 groaned, ( Oh, if I'd only devoted my life 
 to the dative case.' ' 
 
 " Yes, like that. I have to have a quiet 
 place to work, though. I'm not strong and 
 I get nervous easily. I suppose I overwork. 
 My Freshmen and Sophomore years I had 
 a single, but this year I drew a blank. I'm 
 in a parlor with two Freshmen. They are 
 the most selfish, unkind girls I ever knew." 
 Georgia's voice trembled. " They have the 
 room full of people all the time, they sing 
 and talk and play the banjo till I'm wild. 
 I've tried to get another room, but so many 
 names are ahead of mine, I won't have an 
 opportunity till spring. I'll have to leave 
 by then, for I can't stand it much longer. 
 I've worked so hard to get here, too, and 
 I'll never have another chance ! All I ask 
 of college is a quiet place to work " she 
 stopped abruptly. 
 
 Molly sat down on the steps of Music 
 Hall, to which they had walked. 
 
 " I'm sorry about it," she said brusquely, 
 " hope you'll get another room, some way. 
 Don't you think you'd better go in ? That's 
 
ROOM-MATES 39 
 
 the bell. I'm going to take a cut out here 
 awhile. Good-night." 
 
 Georgia walked away, her head erect. 
 
 " So much for bothering any one with 
 your troubles," she thought bitterly. 
 
 Molly looked up steadily at the sky. 
 She wasn't thinking at all. She was just 
 letting the night and the far, far away stars 
 straighten her out. It was like what Tess 
 of the D'Urbervilles called "looking at the 
 sky till you see your soul rise in the air." 
 She loved outdoors. " You never feel 
 stuffy and fubsy there." 
 
 After a while she did think about Georgia. 
 What a neddy she was to miss all the fun, 
 and the girls, and the class, just for more 
 Greek and Latin ! It was mighty nice to 
 have prizes and honors and know a lot if 
 you could do it like Sarah Ralph or Mary 
 H olden, who had as much fun and as many 
 friends as anybody in college. But if you 
 had to grind for it like a slave, and get thin 
 and blue and never get a chance to play 
 Well, anyhow, it was what made Georgia 
 happiest. " All I ask of college is a quiet 
 
40 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 place to work," her voice shook like any- 
 thing when she said that, and there were 
 tears in her eyes. 
 
 Two tears ran down Molly's own cheeks, 
 but not in pity for Georgia. Then she cried, 
 bent over till her face was hidden in her lap. 
 Molly did not cry any oftener than a boy. 
 It meant a good deal when she did. After 
 that she watched the stars till the darkening 
 of college warned her to go in. 
 
 Once in her room she lighted the gas and 
 lay down on her couch. 
 
 " I'll have one grand alone cut," she said, 
 "then I'll tell Georgia Oberley in the morn- 
 ing she can have this room for keeps. I 
 don't believe there's a room-mate living, or 
 a pair of them, can hurt me. I'm fire- 
 proof." 
 
 By and by she turned out the gas. She 
 did not go to sleep, however. Her thoughts 
 could not have been unhappy ones, though, 
 for she smiled to herself in the dark content- 
 edly. 
 
THE MOULDERS OF PUBLIC 
 OPINION 
 
The Moulders of Public 
 Opinion 
 
 THE celebrated lecturer had sent his 
 assistant to take his place. He was 
 a well-meaning young person, and he strove 
 valiantly to adapt his lecture to what he con- 
 ceived to be the needs of a woman's college. 
 He left the subject of journalism in general, 
 in which he was really entertaining, to tell 
 long, inspiring stories of the success of Miss 
 Smith on Harper 's Bazar and Mrs. Jones 
 on The Ladies' Home Journal. His hearers 
 smiled patiently. 
 
 " Man, man," murmured a girl in the 
 front seat, "we are human beings if we 
 are women." 
 
 "They are all alike," returned the girl 
 beside her, " lecturers, ministers, professors. 
 I haven't heard a human being sermon since 
 the one that Englishman preached, where he 
 called us f dear brethren ' and c Christian 
 
 43 
 
44 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 young men.' He said afterwards it was 
 written for some men's guild in England, 
 but c it really applies anywhere, me dear.' 
 Nice old party ! " 
 
 " Hush ! Listen ! " 
 
 The lecturer was giving practical advice. 
 
 " Excellent training for journalistic life 
 may be gained by undergraduates of any 
 college by work on the various periodicals 
 of the institution. The function of the col- 
 lege magazine is larger than the discipline 
 of those engaged in its preparation, how- 
 ever. It should have a high and broad in- 
 fluence on the college life. The editors of 
 such a magazine owe to their fellow-students 
 the greatest deliberation and the utmost 
 care in its preparation ; for they are, in 
 the old phrase, the c moulders of public 
 opinion.' ' 
 
 The two Miscellany editors present grinned 
 joyously at one another and at " their fellow- 
 students." 
 
 " Come on, thou moulder of public 
 opinion," said one of them as the audi- 
 ence left Chapel at the end of the lecture. 
 
Sunset Hill 
 
 The Road to Sunset Hill 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 45 
 
 " We've got to put the Miscellany to bed, 
 you know." 
 
 " Hang the Miscellany ! " said the other, 
 with gloomy rage. " I'm tired as a little 
 dog. I want to go to bed. Let's send it 
 off to-morrow noon." 
 
 " No, sir, we've never been an hour late 
 to the printers yet. We're not going to break 
 our record now. Besides, to-morrow morn- 
 ing isn't long enough time. We've got to 
 take an all-nighter," answered the other, the 
 editor-in-chief. 
 
 The sub drooped visibly as she gazed on 
 her chief. The latter did not bear the 
 appearance desirable in the companion of 
 one's midnight toils. She was suffering 
 from what she called, according to the 
 cheerfulness of her mood, "a bad cold," 
 " pneumonia," or " my death seizure." Her 
 voice was of an awesome depth, her eyes 
 were moist, and her throat was swathed in a 
 variety of liberty scarfs, unpleasantly sug- 
 gestive of flannel bandages beneath. 
 
 " I'll corral Lucy," murmured the sub, 
 diving viciously through the crowd at a girl 
 
46 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 scuttling towards the firewall stairs. The 
 victim offered no resistance, knowing the 
 uselessness of it, but followed the others to 
 the sanctum. First corridor being in its 
 usual state of mine-like twilight, they stum- 
 bled over somebody's laundry tied up in a 
 hard bundle and left outside the next door, 
 groped for the knob, and opened the door 
 to be greeted by a blast of cold air and the 
 round face of one of the business editors. 
 
 " Esther, if you wish my demise post- 
 poned till this number of the Miscellany is 
 ready for an eager people, you will close that 
 window." The chief shivered herself into a 
 chair. 
 
 "We'll stifle if I do." 
 
 " There're only two stages of life in this 
 place," scolded Lucy, as she shut the win- 
 dow, " stifling or freezing. I'd like to know 
 who runs the thermometer here, anyhow." 
 
 "Over in Strong," began Esther, "the 
 water in my pitcher " 
 
 "Please be still, children," begged the 
 chief. " I've got to read and review this fat 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes" 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 47 
 
 " Anna Adams, do you mean to say you 
 haven't looked at that book till now? It's 
 a regular shame for " 
 
 "Don't say anything ha'sh, Mary, that 
 you'll be sorry for when I have passed away. 
 I know I am a vile worm o' the dust, but 
 I've been to Philadelphia to a wedding this 
 month, and to New York to the opera, and 
 written up a three weeks overdue special 
 topic. I'd like to know how I could do 
 anything more. I've written a choice edi- 
 torial, too, on the Armenian massacres, with 
 a new and satisfactory solution of the situa- 
 tion thrown in." The last words were 
 rather vague as the speaker sank into the 
 Life and Letters of Dr. Holmes. 
 
 The door opened to admit the business 
 manager, who began rummaging in drawers, 
 and turning over account books. 
 
 " There's a dragon in this office just 
 battens on postage stamps. I bought a 
 whole grist of them only yesterday and not 
 one's left." 
 
 The editors wrote away vigorously, their 
 faces fairly vacuous with innocence. 
 
48 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " I'm sorry I'm not a literary light, ladies, 
 so I could help you," she said as she gath- 
 ered her papers in a neat pile. " Try to have 
 the magazine small this month, won't you ? 
 Every page costs us just so much more, you 
 know." 
 
 " But, Ellen, we've got to give the sub- 
 scribers the worth of their money. We 
 mustn't make our profits dishonestly," ob- 
 jected Mary. 
 
 " Maybe not," said Ellen, as if really 
 much might be said on the other side. 
 " Give them quality then. One but a lion 
 effect. Good-night." 
 
 "Lucky Ellen," sighed Mary. "Here, 
 Esther, finish up this c Point of View.' 
 The writer left it dangling in mid-air. Wind 
 it up somehow." 
 
 Esther, half-way to the door, stopped in 
 dismay. 
 
 " I'm just awfully sorry, but I can't stay 
 another minute. I've got to dress a Chris- 
 tian doll for the show to-morrow night, and 
 if I get it done in time I want to take the 
 seven train in the morning for New York." 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 49 
 
 " Esther Ford, do you mean to say you've 
 been that witless you've taken one of those 
 foolish dolls to clothe ? " the mild Lucy 
 quavered with scorn. 
 
 " Two ! " abjectly. 
 
 " I wore my family to regular frazzles 
 sending home great wads of them every year 
 to be dressed in about two days. This fall 
 they declined with severity, therefore I took 
 no dolls," said Anna, coming to the surface 
 from out the waves of Dr. Holmes's early 
 youth. 
 
 " It doesn't take long," said Esther. 
 
 "It doesn't! I infer you have yet to 
 dress one if such be your belief," said 
 Mary. " Just experiment with a pair of 
 two-inch sleeves, or try to get one of their 
 yokes to c set.' If I have any time left 
 from work and this Miscellany business, 
 I don't want to waste it on fiddling dolls' 
 clothes, I want some fun." 
 
 " But I promised, Mary." Esther sidled 
 through the door in order to make her exit 
 as inconspicuous as possible. 
 
 A toilsome half-hour passed. Anna read 
 
50 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Dr. Holmes " with the tense expression 
 of one cramming for a final, Mary copied 
 an illegible manuscript in what she fondly 
 believed to be a fair hand o' writ, Lucy 
 painfully evolved titles for " Points of 
 View." 
 
 " Where's Jessie ? " suddenly asked Mary. 
 
 " c At Random/" murmured Lucy. 
 
 " I wish c At Random ' were abolished. 
 It hasn't had a decent thing in it the last ten 
 years." 
 
 " I contribute vers de soci'ct'e to it every 
 month myself," said Lucy. 
 
 " It has ! " Anna emerged with a jerk. 
 " Compare it with that kind of a department 
 in any of the college magazines, and you'll 
 find it as good as any and far better than 
 most." 
 
 "There! there!" soothed Mary, "we 
 know the Miscellany is equalled by few and 
 excelled by none." 
 
 " Here's Jessie ! " cried Lucy. All ac- 
 cepted the diversion. 
 
 The new-comer looked worn and pale. 
 She laid a bundle of papers on the table. 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 51 
 
 " There's not enough, and it's bad be- 
 sides," she announced. 
 
 "It is," pronounced the three, reading- 
 over one another's shoulders. " Is this 
 all ? " 
 
 " All ! " tragically. " And that Freshman 
 who promised to write a farce for the main 
 department is in the infirmary." 
 
 " She should have written it there," said 
 a strange voice, belonging to Rose, the 
 " Persona] " editor. 
 
 " Rosie, tell me your department is all 
 ready," implored Anna. 
 
 "It is not," placidly, " a long alum, re- 
 port has just appeared in the evening mail, 
 and Professor Lane hasn't sent in her news 
 yet." 
 
 " Extort it from her." 
 
 " I can't. She's giving the lecturer a 
 party, and I am not bidden thereto." 
 
 " I shouldn't think she'd give that silly 
 soul a party," mused Lucy. 
 
 " Probably she didn't know he was a silly 
 soul when she invited him," replied the 
 logical Rose. 
 
52 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " It's over now, anyhow. Scandalous 
 hour for the Fac. to be out of bed." 
 
 " What's That doing ? " asked Rose, point- 
 ing to the chief. 
 
 " Reading the excellent Holmes with one 
 hand and reviewing him with the other. 
 Getting nervous, too. Walk softly around 
 It/' 
 
 The chief was in a trance and did not 
 hear. 
 
 " What have we for this month P " 
 
 " There's that article on student life in 
 Germany," began Mary, shuffling over the 
 heaps of papers piled everywhere, " by the 
 special with a name Von Klondyke " 
 
 "Von Kronkyte " 
 
 " It's good. All typewritten, spelled cor- 
 rectly, and with commas at suitable distances. 
 Then there's the criticism of modern Rus- 
 sian novels by Frances Gaylord, woggly in 
 spots, but we can brace it up a bit ; the 
 prize poem, and a really poetical poem on 
 music." 
 
 " That's such a short one, it won't fill up 
 at all." 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 53 
 
 " Then we have that Indian massacre 
 story and " 
 
 " Indian massacre ! " the chief looked up 
 dazedly, "where in the world did we get 
 that ? " 
 
 " She means that attack by robbers in the 
 Black Forest. Go on, Mary." 
 
 " Why, girls, there isn't any more ! Do 
 you hear, Ann, there's only one story and 
 two poems ! " 
 
 Anna groped in the air as if seeking her 
 scattered wits. Having secured them, she 
 beat Dr. Holmes on the table after the man- 
 ner of a gavel. 
 
 "Jessie, go beg Mabel Ropes to write a 
 farce for us, she's bright . at that kind of 
 thing. Tell her we'll write the whole 
 Vassarion if she'll only help us out this 
 once. Bring her along. When she sees 
 our agonies, she'll work gladly." 
 
 " I doubt it," murmured Mary. 
 
 " And rout out Sally to write c At Ran- 
 dom ' jingles like c Moderna from Heaven 
 was turned away,' and c R is for rowdy young 
 rabbit.' She can make them by the yard." 
 
54 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Her room was all dark when I passed it, 
 and there was c Positively engaged ' on the 
 door," objected Jessie. 
 
 " Never mind if it has ' Positively dead ' on 
 it, she's got to come. And Neil will help, 
 too. She never goes to bed, and she can re- 
 view a book without even knowing its name. 
 And, Jessie, as you go along sort of lurk in 
 the dark places, so if any one passes who 
 looks reasonably intelligent and at the same 
 time guileless, you can lasso her. Rose, you 
 know that poetical Special with the strange 
 gowns. See if she hasn't an ode on something 
 lying around. Now, please don't talk. I 
 must get Dr. Holmes buried, and he's still 
 in the prime of life." 
 
 The press gang returned soon, dragging 
 Mabel, cross and sleepy, Neil in evening 
 gown, and with the air of taking in the " Mis- 
 cellany " between two dances, and Emily 
 Mackaye, who had been discovered cutting 
 over a fortnightly theme and who had been 
 induced to turn it into a " Point of View." 
 Sally followed, in a wrapper of surpassing 
 grandeur and pinkness. 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 55 
 
 " Lawk ! Sally, where did you get those 
 clothes ? I didn't know anybody had such 
 except in a trousseau," said Mabel, whose 
 own costume consisted of a golf skirt and an 
 out-at-elbows dressing-sack. 
 
 " It's me room-mate's. She's away for a 
 week, I'm taking a few turns out of her 
 gowns to keep the moths away," returned 
 Sally sweetly. " Children, if I'm to write 
 poems, I've got to have something to sit 
 upon. Have we no cheers ? ' 
 
 " Pile up those old Vassarions" advised 
 Lucy. " I thought we had enough chairs, I 
 brought in two from next door this morning." 
 
 " They were good to lend them. We 
 haven't one to spare in our room," said Rose. 
 
 " Oh, they weren't home." 
 
 " Will you be quiet ? " from the chief. 
 
 An hour went by without interruptions 
 save an occasional " How do you spell neces- 
 sary ? " " Do you think c Forecasts ' a good 
 name for my editorial ? " "Is basket-ball 
 two separate words or a hyphenated one ? " 
 The staff proper sat at the table, the chief 
 writing like a machine, Mary making heavy 
 
56 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 bars with the traditional blue pencil in the 
 story she was editing, Lucy and Jessie, 
 with heads close together, pounding out a 
 poem by main strength, counting the words 
 to get the metre, and clinging to the book 
 of synonyms. The little helpers were seated 
 around the wall, using pads and old Miscel- 
 lanies for desks. Every one wore a die-in- 
 the-ranks-but-finish-the-magazine expression. 
 Mary's watch said 2.30 A.M. Now and then 
 some one would rise with a tired sigh and 
 walk about the long, narrow room or go out 
 to the water-tank for a drink. A vast in- 
 somnia seemed to brood over the first cor- 
 ridor, Main. Girls wandered up and down its 
 length, whispering or talking outright, call- 
 ing to one another in only slightly lowered 
 voices, and stopping to visit at various doors. 
 
 " I have noticed a tendency," remarked 
 Neil as an especially lively party passed, 
 " on the part of those dwelling on the first 
 corridor to hold the ten o'clock retiring bell 
 in somewhat lax regard." 
 
 " It's always so down here," said Rose. 
 " Most of the people are unfortunate Fresh- 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 57 
 
 men poked off in these rooms. I lived here 
 Freshman year. We sported about the 
 corridors all night." 
 
 " Florence Kidder says she never cut in 
 her life nor got up early to study, and she'll 
 have an honor, too/* said Mary. 
 
 " She's a freak." 
 
 " She's mighty nice, though." 
 
 " She is that. She saved my life," this 
 from Anna. Then by way of explanation, 
 " she tutored me for a re. in Trig." 
 
 " Food ! " suddenly exclaimed Sally. 
 
 " Where ? where ? " in excited chorus. 
 
 " I must have it." 
 
 " Go to Inez or Mary C. They live in a 
 wilderness of pleasant little pabs," advised 
 Anna. 
 
 " Now, see here, fellows, I call it terrible 
 plain actions to wake a girl up at three o'clock 
 to ask for food." Mary spoke with heat. 
 
 " There are those who esteem it a privi- 
 lege to be allowed to minister to their suffer- 
 ing little friends," said Neil. 
 
 " I can't see that it's any worse to haul a 
 girl out of bed to get something to eat than 
 
58 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 it is to make one sit up all night slaving over 
 your old magazine," said Mabel. 
 
 " Inez is a real nice-dispositioned person. 
 I woke her up at five the other morning to 
 borrow a collar to wear to New York, and 
 she was full of kind words/' The chief was 
 drawn into the discussion. 
 
 " I hope you returned the collars," said 
 Mary. " I'd like those of mine you took." 
 
 " You can have them back in welcome, 
 they don't fit." 
 
 " They fit me." 
 
 The atmosphere was distinctly grim. 
 Some one knocked. A very curly head was 
 thrust in. 
 
 " Don't let me scare away the afflatus. 
 Molly and I are on cutting. I brought 
 you some of our food." 
 
 " Allah be praised ! " 
 
 " Betty, you're worthy to room with me, 
 and I'm proud you do." 
 
 " Dear Betty." 
 
 " Betsy, I bequeath you * Dr. Holmes ' in 
 my will, he's a very interesting gentleman." 
 
 The tin coffee-pot and the plate of sand- 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 59 
 
 wiches were seized joyously. The coffee 
 was of a truly fatal color, the sandwiches 
 were made of college bread and butter, three 
 inches to the slice, but they vanished with 
 speed. 
 
 " Subject for c Point of View/ Should 
 college bread and butter be used to make 
 sandwiches for a Miscellany cut ? ' 
 
 " I have eaten and drunk, I would sleep 
 now," said Sally. " I've written all the 
 sonnets, lyrics, and other verse forms I'm 
 capable of for the next five years. Please, 
 Miss Nannie, may I go to bed ? " 
 
 "Good-night, you good little bun," said 
 Anna, squeezing her hard. 
 
 " Come on, Bet, glad to get your plate 
 back, aren't you ? " 
 
 Work went on more cheerfully now. 
 
 " Listen, would a man if he were " 
 began Mary. 
 
 "In love, tell a girl so in that casual way ? 
 No, he would not. Don't have a love story, 
 they're so simple in the college magazine," 
 said Anna. 
 
 " attacked by robbers in a lonely inn," 
 
60 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 went on Mary, " turn sick with terror and 
 creep into a corner? It's unnatural cow- 
 ardice." 
 
 " That's just what he did do, though. 
 The girl who wrote it told me so. It was 
 her father," said Rose. 
 
 "Well, it's very unheroic. I'll get her 
 to change it." 
 
 " Change it yourself." 
 
 " I can't. She'll be furious." 
 
 " As long as I edit this magazine, things 
 are going to be changed if I want them to 
 be ! " cried Anna, roused to defend her fa- 
 vorite theory. 
 
 " Well, I don't think that's fair. I - 
 
 " Oh, Mary, have him rush upon his 
 enemies with a tomahawk. Anything for a 
 quiet life," said Rose. 
 
 " Why don't the girls write brisk, up-and- 
 coming college tales instead of cowboy stories 
 when they haven't been west of Utica in 
 their whole lives, or extraordinary love 
 effects ? " asked Mary. 
 
 " Because, my friend, the college story is 
 the hardest in the world to write. If you 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 61 
 
 explain customs and general surroundings 
 enough to enlighten the world without, 
 the grads. are bored. If you don't ex- 
 plain, the public are bored/' said Rose, who 
 knew. 
 
 "Yes, and if you write about the work 
 people say c how women grind in their 
 narrow conception of an education/ And if 
 you write about the fun they say c only 
 silly boarding-school girls after all, with no 
 earnestness or cultivation/ Thank you, I'd 
 rather write two purpose novels and a tract 
 on higher mathematics than one college 
 story," said Anna, who also knew. 
 
 " Lucy," said Jessie, " I'm awfully sorry, 
 but your editorial won't fit. It's too long. 
 What shall I cut out ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I spent just solid hours 
 acquiring chunks of information on public 
 libraries. Every fact is important." 
 
 " Maybe I can leave out some of your 
 deductions." 
 
 " You shall not. They are the pride of 
 my life. Cut out the facts, but spare my 
 deductions, Hubert." 
 
62 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " The alumnae letter won't fit, either. I 
 daren't leave out any of their facts." 
 
 " Read it over carefully, omitting all the 
 thes, awTs, bufs, and verfs. You'll find it 
 makes a great difference," advised Rose. 
 
 "Will you ladies please read this gent's 
 name ? He's given a set of books to the 
 library." Lucy passed along a paper scrawled 
 with strange marks. 
 
 "Can't," said Rose, "leave it over till 
 next time. We mustn't make any more 
 such mistakes as we did when we called 
 poor Miss Todhunter Toadhunter." 
 
 " Or that Winsky woman business that 
 was published in every month and always 
 wrong." 
 
 " Dr. Holmes " in a feeble voice " is 
 dead and decently interred. How can I 
 help ? " 
 
 " Just read this poem the Special sent in. 
 What does it mean ? " 
 
 Anna studied it carefully. 
 
 " It means nothing," she announced. 
 " It's one of those ' puce-colored ' things 
 people love because they can't possibly 
 
PUBLIC OPINION 63 
 
 make sense of them, so they think they are 
 very deep. Put it in." 
 
 " Do you think my editorial on self- 
 government, past and present, will offend 
 the alums. ? " 
 
 " Child, no alum, ever reads anything but 
 the c Personals ' and the college news. No 
 one but the Fac. ever reads the editorials. 
 They won't be pleased, whatever you say, so 
 have some fun freeing your mind. Probably 
 one of the professors will make it a subject 
 of discussion in class, and say it repre- 
 sents the college as a broken-down institu- 
 tion to which no parent would ever send 
 his daughter. And Prexy will give a chapel 
 talk on it with an appendix in the lecture- 
 room. You'll feel like a hero and a martyr 
 and a fool all in one. So go ahead." 
 
 " Girls," said Mary with a mighty stretch, 
 "it's nearly five o'clock. Do let's go to 
 bed and finish up in the morning. It won't 
 take ten minutes then. Dr. Holmes, if you 
 wish me to protect you to your room, you've 
 got to get out of your present c catamouse ' 
 state and come along." 
 
64 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Mary," said Anna, as they groped their 
 way out into the corridor, " could any c fel- 
 low-student ' bring aught against the delib- 
 eration and care with which we edit this 
 magazine ? " 
 
HER POSITION 
 
Her Position 
 
 THE end double on fourth, Main, bore 
 on its front a small sign, marked 
 " Engaged." This room sported the Vassar 
 oak often. At such times one heard the 
 tinkle of guitars and voices singing "The 
 Road to Mandalay " and " Kentucky Babe," 
 or, if music were absent, the no less attractive 
 cries of " Last call for oysters," " Olives 
 needed at the left, please," which show that 
 a feast is toward. At all hours you could 
 hear bubbling laughter and lively voices. 
 This night, however, the room was perfectly 
 quiet. Only the line of light under the door 
 told that its owners were home. Two di- 
 shevelled figures halted outside the door. 
 The corridor, usually clamorous till ten 
 o'clock, and after, was curiously silent. 
 Once in a while a monotonous voice 
 sounded from some room, "And Hannibal, 
 sending his elephants in a line ahead," or 
 6 7 
 
68 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 a worried one, inquiring, "If line cd equals 
 line ab> how does that affect line ef? " 
 
 It was the night before the February mid- 
 year exams. Those who had worked con- 
 scientiously all the semester and those who 
 had floated butterfly-wise through daily tasks 
 were toiling hideously. For this was a 
 Freshman corridor, and the terror of the 
 first Vassar exam, lay heavy upon all. 
 
 " Let's knock up Arna," whispered one 
 of the girls, "she's not studying. She's a 
 regular shark without even trying." 
 
 " You can just make up your little mind 
 she's acquiring information in solid chunks 
 as well as the rest of them. All Freshmen 
 cram chock full for exams. They haven't 
 any more wit." 
 
 The two Sophomores separated, one to seek 
 a warranted-to-get-any-one-through tutor, 
 and the other to taste the delights of Ger- 
 man literature till morning. 
 
 Within the double a rather doleful light, 
 produced by a broken Welsbach, showed 
 two girls working as only Freshmen ever do 
 or can, ceaselessly, despairingly. One, in 
 
HER POSITION 69 
 
 clothes, and with neatly triced up hair, sat 
 bolt upright at a desk, writing slowly. The 
 other, a crumpled heap of pink wrapper and 
 yellow hair, was gabbling excitedly. 
 
 " Barbara Sterling, do you mean to say 
 you've reached the second book ? " 
 
 " Yes, I have. Where are you at ? " 
 
 cc At nothing ! I can't remember one of 
 the book props. ; and, as for the originals, I 
 never saw their silly faces before." 
 
 " What on earth are you doing with all 
 those extraneous geometries ? They don't 
 help any." 
 
 " I have packed them around me so I'll 
 sort of soak in props, through my skin." 
 
 " Barbara ! " after two minutes. " Bab ! 
 Lady Babbie ! " 
 
 "Arna, it's really very inconsiderate in 
 you " 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know I've knocked out two 
 or three noble ideas, but I must get your 
 opinion. You know the minds of the 
 f Olympians ' like an X-ray, usually. Shall 
 we have the devil's coffin, and that pyramid 
 effect in the second book, and this thing 
 
yo VASSAR STORIES 
 
 that looks like an invoice of bird-cages 
 after a trolley collision ? You don't think 
 they'll have the heart to ask for those, do 
 you?" 
 
 ""Won't they! They dote on them. I've 
 seen every geometry paper for the last five 
 years, and those are on every one." 
 
 " But I tell you I can't do them ! I never 
 understood what they meant, and I can't learn 
 them by heart, though I've tried for hours." 
 
 " You'll flunk then." Barbara's tone was 
 more sympathetic than her words. 
 
 " I don't care. Yes, I do, awfully ! I 
 think the attitude of the girls here towards 
 flunking is perfectly ridiculous. They act 
 as if you had robbed a bank and eloped with 
 your coachman, and they make you feel so, 
 too. The teachers are just as bad, they have 
 a c poor thing, she has sinned, but she has 
 repented,' air that makes me wild. Why 
 don't they look at it as the usual thing, and 
 the getting through as the surprise ? That's 
 the way men feel. My brother flunks right 
 and left, and he thinks it's grand." 
 
 " I don't. It isn't a disgrace, of course 
 
HER POSITION 71 
 
 I don't think that. But I'd be ashamed if I 
 were so stupid or so careless I couldn't pass 
 ordinary undergraduate work." 
 
 " Well, I wouldn't. It's the way the girls 
 take it makes me dread it so. They'll be 
 so surprised that Arna Kellar, who spouted 
 so in class, didn't know enough to escape 
 flunking. They'll look just the way those 
 Seniors did when Mabel Hall's name had a 
 star against it in the catalogue, as if she'd 
 been a cheat all through college, and had im- 
 posed on them with a kind of brilliancy, 
 when really she didn't know enough to go in 
 out of the wet." 
 
 " The girls needn't ever know it, honey." 
 
 "They will, just the same. It always 
 leaks out. I'm not going through any se- 
 cret society performances, either. I'm going 
 to stand out in the corridor, the way May 
 Wilks did, and just shout, ' Say, everybody, 
 I've flunked my geometry.' It's enough to 
 make the girls cheat to be on such a strain." 
 
 " But it doesn't. Your theory hasn't any 
 facts behind it. You know there isn't a 
 fraud in Vassar once in three years. I'm 
 
72 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 proud of it for that." Barbara pushed her 
 chair back excitedly. 
 
 " I wish they did." 
 
 " Arna Kellar, you I know you don't 
 mean that. Don't you think it's the finest 
 thing here, that no one watches us ? We're 
 alone in the room half the time, we keep 
 our books in our laps, and we're squeezed 
 into one another's pockets, yet not a girl 
 cheats." 
 
 " Why, do you suppose ? Are we honester 
 than men ? " 
 
 " No. Yes. We must be. Somehow it 
 doesn't seem so bad in men, because it's the 
 expected thing. The Fac. know it and 
 watch out for it. It's a kind of a game the 
 men play with the professors." 
 
 ct I bet I could play it to win ! " laughed 
 Arna. 
 
 ec But you can't here. It would be so 
 cowardly, so mean, when you can do it as 
 easy as breathing. Besides, when you come 
 right down to it, it's lying. You may call it 
 a game or a trick or anything you please ; 
 but it's just plain, ordinary lies." 
 
HER POSITION 73 
 
 " I know it," agreed Arna. " It must be 
 sort of fun, though. I won't interrupt 
 again, for true," as Barbara screwed ner- 
 vously in her seat. 
 
 Both girls studied silently while the clock 
 on the desk ran races with itself. Barbara 
 Sterling was just a girl like a hundred others 
 at Vassar, and a thousand outside. But 
 Arna was one in a century. It was not her 
 beauty and her brilliancy that made her re- 
 markable, though she possessed both, it was 
 that she was the embodied spirit of youth it- 
 self; the vivid, joyous, tireless youth which 
 poets and painters love. With her the year 
 was always at the spring, the morning at 
 seven. She seemed the daughter of an ear- 
 lier race who lived before the world was ever 
 sick or sorry. The girls called her "un- 
 moral," " Greek," and asked to see the furry 
 ears hidden beneath her hair. Yet they fol- 
 lowed her as one follows a cool wind on 
 a languid summer day. She ruled the class 
 by the divine right of personal magnetism. 
 
 She was chairman of the first class meet- 
 ing, where the stream of young women 
 
74 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 brought up on Roberts's " Rules of Order," 
 who talk awesomely of " privilege motions " 
 and "previous business," meets the stream 
 of young women who wouldn't know a mo- 
 tion if they saw it and talk five at once. 
 She soothed and patted and scolded and 
 coaxed this chaotic mass into decency and 
 order, and escaped unharmed, For which the 
 class made her president, by unanimous vote. 
 At the end of two months she belonged to 
 all the worth-while societies and many that 
 were not, had acted in the first hall play, 
 knew half the college to speak to, and had 
 a king's guard of devoted friends. She 
 played gayly from week's end to week's end, 
 and thought Vassar the maiden's paradise. 
 
 But uneasy lies the head that wears a 
 crown at exam. time. Half of Arna's power, 
 and she knew it, lay in her brilliant scholar- 
 ship. At Vassar there is a cold shoulder 
 for both Miss Grind and Mademoiselle 
 Fripon. She who can stand high in her class 
 and yet keep in with most of the fun can 
 "have" the other girls. Arna had done it 
 because of a nimble wit that flew the faster 
 
HER POSITION 75 
 
 in dangerous situations, and a luck which 
 was fairly ominous. She knew, however, 
 that neither wit nor luck availeth anything 
 against a blank sheet of paper, and a profes- 
 sor wearied beyond even humanity by the 
 same mistakes in a hundred different an- 
 swers. 
 
 Both girls lagged down to breakfast half 
 an hour late. Barbara looked gray and 
 pinched, but Arna was as fresh as if newly 
 created. The cross, nervous Freshmen at 
 the table held up their heads with a flicker 
 of animation as Arna swept in. 
 
 "I'm going skating before exams.," she 
 announced. " My head feels cracky in 
 spots. I want air." 
 
 " I'm going to do the most foolish act, 
 study up to the last moment," answered 
 Barbara, rising from an uneaten breakfast. 
 
 When Barbara entered Phil. Hall, she 
 found that the examination was ready to 
 begin. She dropped into the last row of 
 seats, noticing, as she did so, that Arna was 
 the only other person in it. Her room- 
 mate wore a half-defiant, half-gay smile. 
 
76 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " She'll get through ! " thought Barbara, 
 then, as she read the questions, " She can't. 
 They've asked for the bird-cages, and the 
 pyramid, and all those she didn't learn." 
 
 An hour later Barbara dragged herself 
 out of the mathematical abyss into which 
 she had sunk to borrow some paper. She 
 turned towards Arna, who with her back 
 half-around was writing steadily. Barbara 
 leaned over. She stared a full minute in 
 frightened surprise. Then she slipped back 
 in her place. She had seen Arna cheating ! 
 There was no mistaking the carefully drawn 
 and labelled figures on the small squares of 
 paper. She was doing it coolly, too, as if 
 it had all been planned long before. Barbara 
 stared helplessly at her own paper. The 
 inexorable questions seized hold of her 
 again. She forgot that she had a room-mate, 
 even. 
 
 At luncheon a withered-looking set of 
 girls listened in impotent rage while the 
 mathematical genius of the class explained 
 all the mistakes in their answers, and how 
 easily they might have avoided them. Arna 
 
HER POSITION 77 
 
 laughed and chaffed the genius. She wasn't 
 even tired. Barbara worried all the after- 
 noon over what she had seen in the morning. 
 Ought she to talk to Arna about it or not ? 
 She finally decided that she ought to, but 
 that she could not. 
 
 The last examination of the week was 
 Latin. Barbara thought of that and shivered. 
 Arna was weak in Latin prose. Fate put 
 them side by side. Fate made her look up 
 just in time to see what she wanted above 
 everything not to see. Was it deliberate on 
 Arna's part, this cheating, or was it because 
 she was always so self-possessed that she 
 showed neither flurry nor shame now? 
 Some one else had seen her. The Freshman 
 on Arna's left looked over at Barbara, her 
 eyes said, " We know, don't we ? but we'll 
 never tell." She was a foolish little thing, 
 who worshipped Arna. She would keep the 
 secret safely enough, but she would say to 
 herself, " Arna Kellar cheats and Barbara 
 Sterling keeps quiet about it. I can cheat, 
 too, if I please." Barbara had a good deal 
 of weight in the class. 
 
7 8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Barbara broke away from a crowd of girls 
 who circled about her in the corridor after 
 chapel. They were going to celebrate with 
 a grand feast what might be the last night 
 of happiness for many. To-morrow the 
 flunk notes would appear. She pinned 
 " Asleep " on her door, no one would heed 
 their " Engaged " now the time of storm and 
 stress was over. She sat down in the arm- 
 chair and looked at Arna, resting on the 
 couch with the new Jungle Book and a box 
 of Huyler's. 
 
 " You cheated in exams. I saw you." 
 The words said themselves, violently. 
 
 " I didn't ! " Arna was on her feet. 
 
 " Don't you dare deny it ! I saw you, 
 twice, in geometry and in Latin." 
 
 Arna stood perfectly quiet. She hardly 
 seemed to understand the words. Suddenly 
 she flung herself on the couch, sobbing 
 fiercely and beating the pillows with her 
 hands. Barbara was not prepared for this. 
 She had expected denial, excuse. She had 
 never seen Arna even depressed. Now she 
 was listening to what might have been the 
 
HER POSITION 79 
 
 cries of an animal in pain. It was terrible. 
 She ran to the couch and knelt by it. 
 
 " Don't, Arna, don't ! You didn't mean 
 to. You were tempted. You " The 
 memory of Arna's face in the examination 
 made her catch her breath. 
 
 " Who knows it ? " 
 
 "Only I and I think Lily Thomas. 
 I haven't told a soul." 
 
 "And she never will!" 
 
 "You'll tell yourself. You'll go to the 
 Fac. and confess." 
 
 " You simpleton ! " Arna laughed aloud. 
 Her laugh was more shocking even than her 
 tears. 
 
 She pulled Barbara on to the couch, kneel- 
 ing in her place. She clasped her waist with 
 her arms and kissed her. Her eyes were 
 wild still, but her voice was caressing. She 
 begged and reasoned that Barbara would not 
 tell, that she would not even ask her to con- 
 fess herself, that the past might be the past, 
 and a fresh start taken. 
 
 " Promise, Lady Babbie, promise. Don't 
 ruin my life in college ! Don't make me a 
 
80 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 despised, shunned thing. Promise ! prom- 
 ise ! " 
 
 And Barbara promised. Not till she lay 
 wakeful in bed did she realize that Arna had 
 not said one word of real remorse. All her 
 grief had been lest the girls should know 
 and she be cc ruined." 
 
 The subject was never mentioned again. 
 Sometimes in the spring semester, when Bar- 
 bara saw Arna golfing, boating, or idling 
 about the campus all day without a thought 
 of study and only an occasional one of classes, 
 she longed to say, " Remember/' But Bar- 
 bara hated nagging. 
 
 The first day of the Finals had come. 
 The heat was sickening. Girls who had 
 managed to squeeze through Chauvenet's 
 Geometry dared not hope for such luck in 
 Hall and Knight's Algebra. Every one 
 was morose. People were late at the Hall. 
 Seats gave out. There was great confusion 
 and shuffling about. Barbara sat down dis- 
 gustedly in a seat, determined to stay there, 
 no matter who else was ousted. She jumped 
 up quickly. Arna was beside her, and that 
 
HER POSITION 81 
 
 other Freshman ! With an effort she sat 
 down again. 
 
 The examination over, Barbara took a long 
 walk by herself. She had forgotten to worry 
 over whether she had passed or not. She 
 had seen Arna cheat again. The Freshman 
 had seen her, too. 
 
 Some one haled Barbara away to her room 
 to see an old grad. The old grad. proved 
 to be a young and pretty woman, who was 
 relating to a roomful of girls, too far from 
 graduation to be vitally interested, her ex- 
 periences as a school-teacher. She caught 
 her breath long enough to greet the new- 
 comers, then went on with her tale. It 
 was of the vast amount of cheating in the 
 prep, schools. The old grad. grew very 
 earnest over it. She begged the Vassar girls 
 to keep up the old-time standard of absolute 
 honor in all ways, not only for the good to 
 the college itself, but for the influence it 
 might have on the schools. Her enthusiasm 
 and her scorn of the evil wrought on her 
 hearers, always strong in defence of honest 
 work. Barbara listened, painfully. Her 
 
82 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 own mind had been grinding that subject 
 over and over all day. 
 
 " What would you do if you saw a girl 
 cheat twice, and told her, and then you saw 
 her do it again? " she burst out. 
 
 " Expose her, and help send her to Coven- 
 try," cried the old grad. 
 
 " I think she ought to be made a warning. 
 It might do her good, and it surely would 
 the college," said Sarah Ralph, a severe-look- 
 ing girl. 
 
 Barbara told her story in detail, omitting 
 the names. 
 
 " You say another girl saw it, and knows 
 you did, too ? " asked the grad. " I think 
 it is your duty to the college to tell. That 
 other girl may cheat and by her example in- 
 fluence a third, and she a fourth, and so on, 
 endlessly." The old grad. made a dramatic 
 little gesture. 
 
 " It's right abstractly ; but, oh, how hard 
 for the girl ! " said Lois Duncan. 
 
 " Tell, Barbara ! " " We'll cut her dead." 
 " Tell ! you must for the college," came 
 from all sides. Barbara hesitated, fright- 
 
HER POSITION 83 
 
 ened, unhappy. Outside in the corridor 
 she heard Arna's voice, careless, gay. 
 "Can't stop, my dear, I've loafed the en- 
 tire semester. I'm a gloomy grind for all 
 this week." 
 
 "Arna," said Barbara as the two were 
 going to bed. 
 
 " Mm ? " said Arna, her mouth full of 
 tooth-brush. 
 
 Barbara clasped her hands tightly to- 
 gether. An indignant and shocked group 
 of girls had passed sentence on Arna and 
 deputized her to deliver it, but Barbara had 
 loved Arna. 
 
 " I've told the girls about the two times 
 you cheated last exams., and to-day," she 
 rushed the words out anyway. 
 
 You did ! What did they say ? " 
 
 " You're they it's for the sake of 
 college " she could not finish. Arna 
 laughed defiantly, insolently almost. 
 
 " I'm not afraid of the girls," was all she 
 said. 
 
 Barbara had braced herself for a scene 
 like the former one. Arna began to whistle. 
 
84 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 She kept it up till the lights were out. Soon 
 after, Barbara, quivering and crying silently, 
 heard her breathing in sleep. 
 
 It was hard to believe that beautiful, 
 witty, fascinating Queen Arna could be de- 
 posed, harder still that she could be 
 ignored. Yet no one in her class spoke to 
 her, not even Barbara. The minute the last 
 exam, was over Arna left the college. 
 
 The first night of the fall semester every 
 one is glad to be back. It's a wrench, to be 
 sure, to give up home and the enthralling 
 do-nothingness of vacation ; but, oh ! it's so 
 good to see Lois and Sarah and Molly and 
 Betty again. One's family is lovely, of 
 course, and quantities of agreeable folk float 
 about in summer ; but the girls are the girls ; 
 no one just fills their place. Barbara ran 
 from room to room, where she was welcomed 
 with shouts and rejoicings. Scraps of news 
 were called out to her as she flitted from 
 one place to another. 
 
 " I've got my single at last " 
 
 " The new English teacher was at our 
 hotel this summer. She " 
 
HER POSITION 85 
 
 " All the rooms have Welsbachs. We can't 
 make fudges any " 
 
 " Barbara/' this time in a whisper, " Arna 
 Kellar is back." 
 
 " She is ! How will she act ? How will 
 the girls act to her? " 
 
 Both questions were answered within the 
 week. No one in the class spoke to her. 
 She never seemed to know she was being 
 cut. She went through the corridors, en- 
 tered chapel and the dining-room, walked, 
 golfed, wheeled, did everything, with all the 
 old strong, sweet gayety. She seemed as 
 happy shut up to herself as in the days 
 when half college thronged around her. 
 She did not repulse the overtures by mem- 
 bers of the other classes, who only half- 
 understood the matter, yet she made them 
 feel she would rather not receive them. 
 This was no bravado of a week, but the 
 steady life of all winter. She was perfectly 
 alone, she was perfectly happy. 
 
 " She has no heart," thought Barbara bit- 
 terly, " she is just a beautiful body without 
 conscience or feeling." 
 
86 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Arna returned her Junior year and again 
 her Senior. By this time college had be- 
 come accustomed to her position. She made 
 no new friends, and such of the old as 
 wished to receive her back into favor she 
 treated with smiling indifference. She did 
 not appear to shun the girls, nevertheless 
 she was never there when they tried to talk 
 to her. At first Barbara had missed Arna 
 sorely. She was one of the people who 
 like fun but cannot make it. Arna's unfail- 
 ing joy had kept her in a sort of delighted 
 surprise. Barbara did not care for many 
 people, she never expected to love another 
 girl as she had once loved Arna. Her own 
 share in Arna's disgrace vexed her mind con- 
 stantly. Was she a self-righteous prig? a 
 disloyal tell-tale ? or was she a youthful 
 Brutus doing justice on even her own blood ? 
 She could never decide. Life at college is 
 too intense, too eager, to let one brood long 
 over anything. Arna and the whole un- 
 happiness connected with her were swept 
 into the back of Barbara's memory. 
 
 Senior year had come, and with it the 
 
HER POSITION 87 
 
 presidentships of clubs, the chairmanships of 
 committees, and, most onerous burden of all, 
 the responsibility for that mystery known as 
 " the tone " of college. Some Seniors are so 
 impressed by this that they never get back to 
 a normal state. Their whole after life is spent 
 in alternately moralizing over and trying to 
 alter " the tone " of the place they happen to 
 inhabit. Other Seniors, the more light- 
 minded, refuse to be as gods while in college. 
 These same, however, gasp with consternation 
 when they find how little the big world cares 
 about them, or their college, or their beautiful 
 degree. They begin to wish they had lorded 
 it more regally while yet their little day en- 
 dured. 
 
 No one appears to study much of any- 
 thing Senior year, unless it be some spe- 
 cial topic devotee or some unlucky wight 
 captured for an ethics debate, but every one 
 is fiercely busy. The underclassman who 
 rooms with a Senior may count on the parlor 
 being occupied three nights in the week by a 
 clamorous committee, and the other four by 
 heated discussions on the great questions of 
 
88 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the day : Will you, if you get an honor, re- 
 fuse it ? Will the Fac. be fair in disqualifying 
 Emily Brown for an honor because of poor 
 Freshman work? Are honors just? Is there 
 peace and harmony between the Fac. and the 
 students? If there isn't, why not? and many 
 others. The discussions are one of the 
 pleasantest parts of Senior year. They lead 
 nowhere, as nobody ever converts anybody 
 else, and the Faculty wouldn't pay any atten- 
 tion even if the whole college was of one 
 mind ; but the zest of argument is just as joy- 
 ous as if mighty results were brought to pass. 
 Barbara's Senior year was a bitterly hard 
 one. She was a slow girl, who could just 
 keep up with the required work under the 
 most favorable conditions. She was not well 
 her Junior year, and so fell behind. The 
 fall of her Senior year she had a long fever. 
 If any of you have ever had a block of 
 time cut out of your college life by illness, 
 you know the wearisome drag, drag, of topics 
 that never get finished, essays that never get 
 written, lessons that never catch up. All the 
 labor-saving devices, from a good tutor to 
 
HER POSITION 89 
 
 "a judicious slur/' are powerless to pull the 
 ordinary student up into line. Barbara 
 plodded drearily along, tired, discouraged, 
 unhappy. She had too much pluck and too 
 little wisdom to go home and be graduated 
 in the next class. 
 
 One hot May afternoon, when drowsy 
 sounds stole in through the open windows, 
 and a faint haze dimmed the keenness of the 
 spring green, she rose from the last lecture 
 of the day nervous and exhausted. She 
 stopped to speak to the professor about some 
 of the never completed back work. 
 
 cc Miss Sterling," said the professor hesi- 
 tatingly, " your work is not quite up to the 
 standard. You have probably been espe- 
 cially interested in some other subject and so 
 have neglected this." 
 
 Barbara smiled grimly. " Am I going to 
 flunk ? " 
 
 " Oh, I think not, a thorough review, 
 good papers in the written lessons and at 
 examination time, will put you all right." 
 
 Barbara walked wearily downstairs, the 
 elevator being in its usual damaged condition. 
 
90 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 She stood still a minute by the open door of 
 the Faculty parlor, and looked into the mir- 
 ror which once reflected the turns and twirls 
 of countless girls in the old days when the 
 room was J. She saw herself sallow-faced, 
 hollow-eyed, thin, and drooping. Even her 
 clothes seemed to share the general depres- 
 sion, they looked flaccid and draggled. 
 
 " If I flunk and have to study for a re. 
 Senior vacation, I shall die dead." She swal- 
 lowed two fat tears that ran into her mouth. 
 " I can just manage to crawl on till then, but 
 I can't do another stroke." 
 
 Some one passed her with flying feet. It 
 was Arna Kellar, dressed for dinner in a 
 gown that seemed all fresh, fluffy frills and 
 rose ribbon. Her hair shone like gold, her 
 cheeks were vivid pink, her whole air was 
 radiant. Barbara felt a great longing to be 
 near her, to have her strength revive her, as 
 in the old days. 
 
 "Arna!" she called. They had not 
 spoken for three years. 
 
 " Yes ? " Arna was as cool as if she had 
 parted from Barbara only an hour ago. 
 
HER POSITION 91 
 
 " Isn't it a pretty day ? " 
 
 " Too hot, don't you think ? " and she 
 was gone. 
 
 Barbara wandered lifelessly out to the 
 Oval. She could not watch the basket-ball 
 practice going on there. It hurt her to see 
 every one so alive and jolly. She thought 
 she should like to find Georgia Oberley, who 
 of course was grinding nervously along 
 somewhere, and work and worry and be 
 miserable with her. Georgia's anxious, hur- 
 ried face was the only one she wanted to see 
 now. 
 
 An agitated rustle stirred the lecture-room 
 the next morning. A drop quiz, and from 
 a clear sky ! Barbara propped her head on 
 her hand and stared at the Greek quotation 
 written on the board. She knew it perfectly, 
 if she could only get started on it. Her 
 mind, past all power of original thinking, 
 would work of itself, she knew, if it were 
 only set a-going. If some one would only 
 give her the first line, the first sentence even ! 
 She remembered reading Jane Barlow's story, 
 " Mr. Polymathers," in which an old man 
 
92 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 after half a century of writing gets his chance 
 at Dublin College. He goes up, is con- 
 fronted with "a bit of Virgil I'd known all 
 me days," and cannot read one word of it. 
 She understood that story now. The whole 
 quiz was on that quotation, its "philos- 
 ophy," " philology," " subjectivity," and 
 several other things the old Greek who 
 wrote it never imagined were in it. And 
 this was the subject in which she had been 
 warned ! 
 
 Who was that hateful party opposite her 
 at the table, writing like the wind ? Arna ! 
 No fear of her cheating now, she was the 
 most thorough-going student in the class. 
 If she could only be a mind-reader for one 
 instant ! Arna had laid her papers out on 
 the table ; her handwriting might have 
 served on a sign-board. Suppose she, Bar- 
 bara Sterling, were to read the first line, only 
 the first one! Suppose she were to be a 
 cheat and a liar ! 
 
 She read the first page. Then, just as 
 she expected, her mind began to grind in 
 the old track. She copied Arna's pages as 
 
HER POSITION 93 
 
 mechanically as a machine, correcting her 
 mistakes, profiting by her better choice of 
 words. The bell sounded, the hour had 
 gone in her struggle to get started. She 
 folded her paper together with a wornout 
 sigh. Not till then did she look up. Arna 
 was watching her with an odd expression, 
 impossible to read. Had she seen ? 
 
 Barbara walked to her room and went to 
 sleep. Her last thought was, "You are 
 a liar." She did not care especially. 
 
 She slept till the spring twilight crept in 
 and hid the sunbeams. The long rest 
 broke her unnatural calm. She lashed her- 
 self for her fault as only a sensitive, overcon- 
 scientious girl can. She called it her "un- 
 pardonable sin." Hot and tousely from 
 sleep, she hurried to the professor's room. 
 No, her written lesson had not passed her ; 
 but, in reviewing her work for the semester, it 
 seemed better than the professor had at first 
 thought, so she was as yet unconditioned. 
 The lesson had not counted greatly either 
 way. She was very busy, would Miss Sterl- 
 ing call again? No chance for confession 
 to-night. 
 
94 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Every one was out on the campus. 
 People with work that must be done before 
 first hour soothed their consciences by tell- 
 ing them that from 5 to 7 A.M. was the 
 prince of times for studying. Of course, no 
 one would really get up at that hour. 
 It is only when you are a Freshman that 
 you grope along the corridors in the dreary 
 " false dawn " to some room where queer 
 soups, made out of canned mysteries, and 
 queerer mental food, await you. People 
 without work or consciences were riot- 
 ously joyful. They played games among 
 the trees, where the shadows were scarey, 
 and out in the open, where the moon shone. 
 Silly games they were, like tag and blind 
 man's buff. The players wanted to be 
 silly. They were so happy, just to be 
 young and at Vassar in the spring. Groups 
 of twos and threes were wandering about 
 or curled up in corners of the buildings. 
 Half the Senior class were singing on Strong 
 steps. Their voices sounded sweet. Some- 
 body in Raymond was calling to some one 
 in Strong, with intent to be heard, too. 
 
HER POSITION 95 
 
 Even that sounded pleasant and friendly 
 and a good part of college, softened as all 
 was by the May night. 
 
 Barbara sat down on the steps of one of 
 those doors where no one ever comes out, 
 in the angle of the wings. She wanted the 
 night, but she didn't want the girls. Some 
 did come out that time. The girl almost 
 fell over Barbara. 
 
 " Arna ! " she cried. Then in almost 
 the words of three years ago, " I cheated 
 to-day." 
 
 " I saw you." 
 
 " Don't you despise me ? " 
 
 " I ? I have such a right to ! " Arna 
 laughed lightly, but bitterly. 
 
 " Sit down, Barbara," she pushed her 
 back on the seat, " and listen to me. 
 You are sick from your work and your 
 well, yourself. You went into class as hon- 
 est as as that sky." A clear blue 
 space stretched above their heads. "You 
 knew that test absolutely. I haven't been in 
 your class for nothing. A month from now 
 you'll be able to read that off like a shot. 
 
96 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 You're worn out now and weak-willed and 
 beside yourself. Before you thought 
 why, you couldn't think, you hadn't any 
 mind left you copied from me. It was 
 cheating, one way, but it wasn't in another. 
 You've slaved four years, and you were so 
 honest you wouldn't let any one give you 
 ordinary help even. I know one dishonest 
 act doesn't make a girl a liar, it's doing it 
 again and again that " She stopped. 
 Both girls looked up at the sky. They 
 could not face one another yet. 
 
 " Bab," the old name brought tears to the 
 other's eyes. " I was a cheat. Oh, not 
 when you saw me, I don't mean, that was 
 the least of my lies. I never studied. I 
 didn't know anything that Freshman year. 
 I wasn't out and out and square about it 
 like Betty Blake and Sally Dean. I didn't 
 say, c I don't care about your old books. I 
 came for fun.' I wanted to be considered 
 a great scholar and a genius. I couldn't 
 bear to have the girls think me just like 
 every one else who had to grind over 
 Hygiene and Freshman English, or flunk. 
 
HER POSITION 97 
 
 I planned to cheat all the semester. When 
 the time came, I did it as coolly as you eat 
 your breakfasts. I told myself, 'You're 
 a cheat/ but I didn't mind it any more than 
 I minded saying, f You're young.' I never 
 had thought of right or wrong, honor or 
 dishonor, just of fun, nothing else, and I 
 suppose I wasn't born with c an intuitive 
 moral sense.' 
 
 <c Do you remember how I cried when you 
 found out? I felt awfully to have you 
 know, for I wanted your good opinion, but 
 I didn't care a rye straw for my own disgrace. 
 After a bit, when I found you weren't going 
 to tell, I didn't mind you, you were as nice 
 as ever to me." 
 
 Arna was silent a minute. When she 
 spoke again, it was in a low voice that Bar- 
 bara had never heard from her before. 
 
 " When you told, I was wild against you, 
 but I never dreamed the girls would cut me. 
 I was such a fool in those days. I didn't be- 
 lieve love of truth and a high standard of 
 honor could win against me. I thought I 
 held the girls so fast they couldn't get away. 
 
98 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 I didn't think there were so many high- 
 minded girls here. I measured every one by 
 myself. I had no real character, just charm 
 and a happy nature. 
 
 " Look at me, Bab. Am I the same ? " 
 She bent over Barbara till her face almost 
 touched hers. Even in the shadowy light 
 Barbara could see the change wrought by 
 the three years, the girl made into a woman. 
 "When I saw they were in earnest, I ran 
 away, home. I never meant to come back. 
 I remembered my family, they would learn 
 it somehow. I determined to come back 
 and brave it out. I would act just as happy 
 as ever. Haven't I done it? You thought 
 I was wooden, didn't you ? You wouldn't 
 believe I could have such pride, such self- 
 control. I can do anything I try. That 
 sounds young. It's true, just the same. 
 Did you ever live three days all alone, 
 with no one to even look at you, not away 
 off like a hunter in the woods, but with peo- 
 ple who despised you all around? Some- 
 body says a great crowd is a great wilder- 
 ness. I lived in the wilderness three years, 
 
HER POSITION 99 
 
 and and God only knows how lonely I 
 have been ! 
 
 "At first I hated the girls. After a while 
 I began to think. Oh, you can do a mighty 
 lot of thinking in three years ! I grew to 
 hate myself. In those Freshman days I was 
 the most hideous creature on earth, one who 
 hadn't a thought for any one but herself, and 
 that the lower side, too, her fun, her position, 
 her importance, her pleasure. I cared for 
 those so much I dragged myself through the 
 mud to save them. What difference was 
 there between me and a man who follows his 
 passion ? I didn't happen to want to drink 
 or gamble. If I had, I would. You think 
 I'm morbid. Do I look like that? My 
 cheating was just one way my awful self- 
 ishness expressed itself. What did I care 
 about honor, or Vassar's standards, or any- 
 thing, as long as my reputation for bright- 
 ness was safe, my power over the girls un- 
 shaken? I was one of those c feeble souls ' 
 Emerson describes, who wants to be loved, 
 but don't care about being lovely. I 
 wanted praise, and influence, and friendship 
 
ioo VASSAR STORIES 
 
 that I hadn't earned, that just came to me 
 because I had certain ways of speaking and 
 looking, not because I was really fine. 
 
 " But now I want to be lovely. I 
 reckon I'm what my old mammy used to 
 call 'converted to 'ligion.' Some of the 
 girls think my punishment was too great. 
 Maybe it was for those three acts, not for 
 my life." 
 
 " You needn't bring any punishment on 
 me," said Barbara sternly. " I'll be my own 
 hangman. I'm going to tell every one my- 
 self." 
 
 Arna started as if roused out of sleep. 
 
 "What did you say? Oh yes. Til 
 never tell. You mustn't, either. Your 
 punishment is not to tell. If you do, 
 you'll take away the sting of your fault. 
 People will think you have expiated it ; and 
 you'll think so, too, and you'll feel soothed, 
 and and you must keep it a secret 
 always." 
 
 " I can't ! I hate myself for it." 
 
 " That's morbid. One fault doesn't break 
 us any more than one virtue makes us. A 
 
HER POSITION ioi 
 
 fault ought never to be confessed* unless it's 
 going to do some good. Otherwise it's only 
 a weak effort to hush up our conscience. 
 Don't you see how much greater punishment 
 it is for you to keep still ? " 
 
 " But my influence, my rank ! " 
 
 " Who saw, except me ? You'll pass 
 without that paper. Promise me you won't 
 tell. Promise ! Think about your family. 
 Promise ! " 
 
 Barbara, never able to refuse Arna, nodded. 
 She held Arna's hand hard. 
 
 " Arna," timidly, " you said you hated the 
 girls. I ruined your life here, but I meant 
 to do right. Did you hate me ? " 
 
 c< Once. After that my pride wouldn't 
 let me look at you again. When you spoke 
 to me to-day, I couldn't stop to talk, the first 
 time after three years. But now Oh, 
 Bab, I'm a c feeble soul' still. I'm not 
 lovely, but I want to be loved by you." 
 
 " Won't you answer one question for 
 me?" said Barbara, raising her head from 
 Arna's lap, where it had been resting since 
 they finished talking. " Did I do right to tell 
 
102 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the .gins ?,, , Yon- would have grown thought- 
 ful and sincere yourself, I know, without 
 such c a refiner's fire/ You were so young 
 then." 
 
 The bell sounded within the building. 
 Arna stood up. Her face was hidden in 
 the shadow. 
 
 "We are friends again, that's all that 
 really matters now," she said. 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 
 
A Sense of Obligation 
 
 EICRETIA FOLGER was brought 
 up in one of those stranded New Eng- 
 land villages, cc left by the stream whose waves 
 are years," which, robbed of its patriarchs by 
 death, its young men by the city, grow ever 
 feebler and weaker. Without enterprise, am- 
 bition, or interest in itself even, the village 
 was like some once fresh stream become 
 now, its outlet dammed, a stagnant pond. 
 An artist may think the pond peaceful and 
 picturesque, a scientist knows it is deadly. 
 
 Lucretia's family her clan made up half 
 the village were virtuous, ignorant, and 
 dull. Lucretia, defying the laws of heredity 
 and environment, was sensitive, poetical, " a 
 scorner of the ground," an idealist. The 
 villagers called her " a kind of genius," with 
 a cold contempt in the word " genius." Her 
 family scolded, jeered, and reasoned till she 
 despised her ideals as " fools* notions " and 
 105 
 
io6 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 her nature as "unbalanced." If she had 
 been the genius the village called her, she 
 probably would have paid it back its con- 
 tempt threefold and lived her own life. But 
 she was not. She was only a young girl 
 who loved passionately all good and beauti- 
 ful things. Because she knew no one else 
 in the whole world like herself, she believed 
 she was wrong, and struggled ceaselessly 
 against her own nature. She fought back 
 the shiver of protest that moved her when 
 she saw a new evidence of the village alle- 
 giance to its favorite text, "Is not the life 
 less than meat ? " She longed to be prosaic, 
 practical, sordid, which she termed "not 
 being queer." 
 
 When she was twenty, two events changed 
 her life. Her grandfather died, leaving her 
 " considerable property," and Miss Rockwell 
 came. 
 
 Miss Rockwell was a graduate of the 
 early Vassar when it was a Female College. 
 Her sense of her responsibility towards " the 
 higher education of women " filled her with 
 a rather awesome zeal. She claimed Lu- 
 
The Library 
 
 The Lodge 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 107 
 
 cretia with the rallying cry, " You need 
 Vassar, and Vassar needs you." 
 
 Lucretia offered no resistance. That of 
 her family was conquered by the argument 
 that a college education was an investment 
 of her money which would yield a good 
 interest in the shape of a salary as a teacher. 
 
 What can express that which Vassar was 
 to her ? Land to the shipwrecked sailor P 
 Water to the desert traveller ? These know 
 the bitterness of her deprivation, but not its 
 years of endurance. Vassar gave her books, 
 instruction, inspiration. Its great gift was 
 respect for herself, the assurance that she 
 had a right to her individuality, though it 
 differed from that of every other human 
 being. It showed her no new great vision 
 of truth or beauty. The little farm garden 
 had been to this " dreamer of dreams " an 
 " isle called Patmos." It did prove to her 
 that hers were such indeed, and no will-o'- 
 the-wisps, and that there is no worker so 
 great as he who is " a holder up of -visions." 
 
 In return Lucretia loved Vassar idola- 
 trously. She thought it perfect, and listened 
 
io8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 with real distress to the denunciations of every- 
 body from President to elevator boy, with 
 which the most loyal Vassarites then, as now, 
 were wont to cheer themselves. She rushed 
 into battle with these same revilers, changed 
 to offensive partisans, to repel all outside 
 critics. She absorbed all that Vassar could 
 offer, in work and in fun. She did every- 
 thing that one mortal, hampered by time 
 and space, could. Her little body was ex- 
 hausted often, but her spirit never flagged. 
 Some of the professors said her steady, 
 eager gaze in a lecture hypnotized them. 
 She even spent her vacations at Vassar, that 
 she might not miss one experience of Col- 
 lege, not even that of the bare, lonesome 
 corridors and deserted campus. 
 
 Out of her devotion to College grew a 
 longing to have its influence felt everywhere. 
 Vassar was a true miracle-worker. It must 
 go, like the mountain to Mahomet, to those 
 who, by reason of age or sex, could not come 
 to it. She weighed earnestly the needs of 
 different charities and schools. Where would 
 Vassar do the most good? 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 109 
 
 Commencement found her still undecided. 
 Then came a letter from her mother. She 
 and Lucretia's step-father had been " roller- 
 stoning it," as their former neighbors said, 
 all over the West for several years. Now 
 they were settled in a small town near the 
 Rockies. The mother was lonely and feeble ; 
 Lucretia was her only unmarried child ; the 
 town wished a school-teacher ; Lucretia's 
 money was used up. The deduction from 
 these facts seemed clear to the mother. So 
 it did to the daughter. At the end of the 
 week she went West. 
 
 Lucretia's Western home was the likeness 
 of her Eastern one, with the difference that 
 the one was a stranded farm village, once 
 dwelt in by honest farmers, and the other 
 was a stranded mining-camp, whose first 
 settlers had been lawless miners. The miners 
 had gone ; with them the violence and crime 
 of the early days, with them also the spirit 
 and energy of the town. Only poor whites 
 and half-breeds remained, a lazy, shiftless 
 crew, who just kept alive the sick town which 
 could neither die nor get well. 
 
no VASSAR STORIES 
 
 It was, however, a civilized, Christian com- 
 munity, with a church and .a school. The 
 world was too busy with missions on the 
 Congo, seminaries in Alaska, and settlements 
 in Boston to give it a thought. If the 
 people had been picturesque, the work dan- 
 gerous, or the sympathy of fellow-workers 
 present, Lucretia would have found some 
 inspiration. As it was, she saw that Vassar 
 must work alone. She never doubted the 
 result. College was a vast power-house, she 
 was the connecting wire between it and the 
 forsaken town. 
 
 The years that followed her graduation 
 were spent by Lucretia in giving out Vassar 
 with the same unflagging energy as she had 
 absorbed it. She was Board of Education, 
 Library Association, Sunday School Com- 
 mittee, Neighborhood Guild, Charity Or- 
 ganization, Hospital, and Orphan Asylum. 
 She wrote her friends, " It is a hard life, but 
 a happy one." She may have been right 
 about the happiness, yet her old quick- 
 coming smile had something mechanical in 
 it now, and her eyes were always full of 
 shadows. 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION in 
 
 At first Vassar was only a brake on the 
 steady, if gradual, downhill course of the 
 town. Then the town stood still, and then 
 oh, how long to the then ! - it began to 
 mount up. The improvement was pitiably 
 small. An outsider would have seen no 
 change in the town of that day and of the 
 long ago June when Lucretia came. But 
 Lucretia saw, and thanked God and Vassar 
 College. 
 
 About this time she began to save money 
 for her class reunion. She had missed the 
 two years and the five years ones, for she had 
 neither money nor time to spare, but this 
 tenth she must attend. She needed the 
 encouragement of Vassar itself, of the mem- 
 bers of the class accomplishing good results 
 in various kinds of work. Most of all she 
 wanted to see the dear girls again, and laugh 
 and talk and forget she was a wire or a mes- 
 senger or anything but just Lucretia Folger, 
 Vassar, '8 . 
 
 The first day of school that year she 
 noticed a big young fellow seated by the 
 door, who looked rough, but gave no trouble. 
 
ii2 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Once, when his cool gray eyes met her soft 
 brown ones, a flash of sympathy passed be- 
 tween them. Later she found that he was 
 Jean Lloyd from the hill camp, and that he 
 had been at school more than most of the 
 town boys. Lucretia liked him at once. 
 He was both manly and gentle, in spite of 
 his apparent roughness. He was clever, too, 
 when he could be stirred out of his usual 
 laziness. 
 
 Jean, for his part, adored his little teacher, 
 as a boy often does a woman twice his age. 
 She was brighter, prettier, and more refined 
 than any one he had ever met in his knocked- 
 about life. 
 
 As he was not a fit for any of the dozen 
 classes crowded into the school day, Lucretia 
 gave him special courses before and after 
 the session. To do this, she had to lengthen 
 her day and shorten her night an hour each. 
 " I can sleep any time," she said, " but it's 
 not often I get such a boy to teach." It 
 was uphill work teaching him, for most of 
 the time he did not want to learn. She 
 taxed Vassar to the fullest for incentives. If 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 113 
 
 she could only win this boy, it would be the 
 seal of Vassar's rule in that far country. So 
 she cheered, scolded, persuaded, reasoned, 
 implored, till the boy caught some of her 
 fire and began to work in a steady, grinding 
 way sure to accomplish results. One after- 
 noon the two were walking in the woods 
 together, as they often did. 
 
 "My folks came from New England, 
 too," Jean said suddenly. Conversation was 
 always irregular between them. 
 
 " How did you get out here ? " 
 
 " Father had the mining fever, so he 
 came, mother came because he did, and we 
 kids because we had to. Father died, and 
 mother never had money to get back East. 
 We kept on here after she died because we 
 hadn't any other home. My father was 
 educated. He was a Yale graduate," shyly. 
 
 " I knew it," cried Lucretia, " that's where 
 you inherit your good mind." 
 
 " Oh, mother was smart, too, though she 
 wasn't educated like he was." 
 
 " You're going to college yourself," went 
 on Lucretia excitedly. "It will be wicked if 
 
ii4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 you stagnate like the men here." She had 
 longed for the chance to talk to him about 
 an education, now it had come. 
 
 "Easy talking/' answered the boy with 
 his slow smile. " I don't know enough to 
 get in. If I did, where'd the money come 
 from ? " 
 
 cc Work your way through, dozens of girls 
 do it at Vassar, and it's far harder for a girl 
 than for a man. I'll prepare you. You're 
 almost ready now." 
 
 "You're real kind, but I don't know as I 
 want to go." 
 
 They halted, facing one another. The 
 boy was away above Lucretia's head. She 
 stepped on a rock and from this throne 
 poured out the love and devotion of ten 
 years for her College. She thought she 
 spoke for Yale, but it was really for Vassar. 
 When she ended, he said coolly enough, 
 but with a spark in his eyes, 
 
 " I don't know as I want to go yet ; but, if 
 you say I must, I reckon it's settled." 
 
 Lucretia worked that year as never before. 
 The boy, thoroughly aroused, drained her 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 115 
 
 knowledge dry at every lesson. Sometimes 
 she feared he would break down, for he 
 worked in the camp out of school hours. 
 It was she herself who was nearest the worn- 
 out place. The school-house seemed a prison 
 within whose walls she trod a weary tread- 
 mill. Every morning she dragged herself 
 out of bed, wavered, whispered, " Good for 
 another day," and crept downstairs. 
 
 June was coming ! June with College and 
 the girls ! The thought quickened her 
 weary feet and brightened her heavy eyes. 
 She slept with her bank-book under her 
 pillow. In it was the record of ten years' 
 saving pinched away from all luxuries and 
 many comforts. It was her guarantee of 
 coming happiness : she liked to feel it in the 
 long, restless nights. 
 
 Spring had reached May, cold and damp 
 in that part of the world. Lucretia had 
 given her pupils a holiday in honor of some 
 local god. Jean, however, had come as 
 usual. Her head felt thick and hot. Should 
 she tell him she could not teach to-day ? 
 She was conscious, without raising her eyes, 
 that he stood before her speaking. 
 
n6 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " I'm awful sorry. You'll be disappointed. 
 I'm not going to college." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I've given up college. It's not the get- 
 ting in. I guess I know enough for that. 
 It's the money. I haven't enough for my 
 fare East, even. After I get in, I'd have to 
 work like a horse just to keep alive. A 
 man here's offered me a job with good wages 
 and a chance to get more. If I had fifty 
 dollars, even, I'd stick to college, for I've 
 got the notion. But my spunk's all given 
 out. I haven't the grit to go and starve, 
 and that's about what it comes to. There's 
 no use talking to me," for Lucretia had 
 moved a little, " my mind's set. You 
 can't change it." The words came in 
 thumps. 
 
 Lucretia stared stupidly at him. In a 
 minute he went out. Very slowly all he 
 had said reached her brain. If she could 
 only get money for him ! Why she had 
 it herself! 
 
 Her head resting in her hands, her arms 
 propped on the table, she struggled witli the 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 117 
 
 problem. Which was the right, to go to 
 the reunion ; to draw in strength, courage, 
 inspiration, to give out again to the feeble, 
 needy town, which had no other helper, or 
 to give this boy a chance to be the man he 
 was meant to be ? The need of the town 
 was sore, surely. The boy had a splendid 
 strength within him if it could once be 
 quickened to life. 
 
 Her own vacation, the sight of the old 
 loved friends, the visit to her adored College, 
 for which she had saved and yearned ever 
 since the blue line of the Catskills faded 
 from her eyes, never occurred to her at 
 all. There are some people who have elim- 
 inated the personal equation from their prob- 
 lems. 
 
 She sat still a long time. Perhaps the 
 clergyman in the shabby church across the 
 road would have been shocked to know she 
 was invoking Vassar College as if praying 
 to it. 
 
 " I see my duty," she said at length, as 
 firmly as a general giving a command. 
 " The good to the boy is certain and great : 
 
n8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 that to the town is uncertain and may be 
 small. It is now or never for him. The 
 town has other chances." 
 
 She stood up in the relief of decision. 
 Then all that she was giving up rushed into 
 her thoughts. She sat down on the worn 
 little school platform, exclaiming, " Oh, my 
 beautiful visit ! the dear girls ! " No tears 
 rose in her eyes, but her face worked with 
 " a kind of dry weeping that comes to the 
 miserable." 
 
 With very bright eyes and very white 
 cheeks, Lucretia hurried toward the camp to 
 find Jean. She was not afraid her resolve 
 would give way, it had passed out of her 
 control into an accomplished fact, but she 
 wanted the boy to know the good news 
 at once. 
 
 He was sawing wood alone behind the 
 camp. 
 
 " You'll have to go to College now," she 
 began without other greeting. " I have the 
 money for you, your fare and a good deal 
 more." 
 
 " Where'd you get it ? " bluntly. 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 119 
 
 " It's my own." Lucretia was too uncon- 
 scious of herself to be diplomatic. " I saved 
 it to go to my class reunion at Vassar. I de- 
 cided, after you left, that it would be far 
 more wisely used in helping you through 
 college than it " 
 
 The boy was not listening. He had 
 picked up a log and was sawing it steadily. 
 His eyes were narrowed ; his face had a brutal 
 look. Lucretia had seen that expression be- 
 fore, once when he pulled a little girl out of 
 a stream which dragged her sullenly back, 
 and once when he had puzzled weeks over a 
 mathematical problem neither of them could 
 solve. 
 
 She realized, as her heart grew cold at the 
 sight, how dear a hope this boy had been. 
 The walls and towers of Vassar, so clear to 
 that inward eye all these years, and the voices 
 of the men and women there who had struck 
 the pitch of her life, always sounding in her 
 ears, faded and died. She saw only the 
 dreary, ruined town and heard only the ran- 
 corous voices of the men on the hill. She 
 was only Lucretia Folger, who had worked 
 
120 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ceaselessly and failed. In her face, as they 
 say one sees for an instant, in the face of a 
 dying man just as he dies, the strength and 
 fire of youth, was all the devotion, all the 
 unquenchable purpose of her life. The boy 
 turned towards her. 
 
 "You're real kind, ma'am," he said gently, 
 though his jaw was set, " but I reckon I ain't 
 quite small enough to travel East in your 
 shoes. I can't take your money, but I'm 
 going on to Yale next week, just the same, 
 and I'm going through it, too, if I starve." 
 
 He jerked himself around the corner with- 
 out another word. 
 
 Lucretia ran down the hill as if the weari- 
 ness of the past was over forever. She met 
 the old clergyman, the sharer, in a feeble 
 way, of her aspirations for the town. 
 
 " Good news ? " he asked, as he saw her 
 face. 
 
 " A triumph for Vassar ! " she cried, hur- 
 rying on. 
 
 The clergyman was a dull old man ; but, 
 as he looked at the mean street, the sham- 
 bling school-house, and the slatternly people 
 
A SENSE OF OBLIGATION 121 
 
 idling about, and then remembered the face 
 of the little woman, faded, marked with 
 many a tired line, yet radiant from the spirit 
 within, he murmured to himself, 
 " A triumph for Vassar ! " 
 
NEITHER A LENDER NOR A 
 BORROWER BE 
 
Neither a Lender nor a 
 Borrower be 
 
 " ~W F my sainted mother could only see 
 
 I this now/' said Betty. 
 
 "It certainly does look grand/' agreed her 
 room-mate. 
 
 " And to think what a horror it was when 
 she came. Poor lamb, her eyes were dis- 
 tended till they were like saucers when she 
 beheld the dust under my desk and the 
 unlaved dishes on the window-sill. But she 
 was so terrible scared for fear you or Jan 
 had left them there, she refrained from any 
 reproach. Did you see her expression when 
 you opened your bedroom ? " 
 
 "It didn't begin to be as bad as yours, 
 thank you." 
 
 " I had the wit to keep mine closed. 
 
 Well, anyhow. Aunt Laura and her friend 
 
 will see mother to-night. They'll tell her 
 
 how beautiful everything was. Will you 
 
 125 
 
126 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 assist me at my afternoon tea P Aunt Laura 
 is sort o' awesome to play with long alone/* 
 
 " How often have I got to tell you that 
 I tutor this hour? I'd rather meet a whole 
 family tree of aunts than teach my Stoopid 
 one Greek lesson ; but money must be 
 obtained if I don't intend to be a thing 
 of c shreds and patches ' all winter." 
 
 The speaker, a small girl who always wore 
 her hair in a pagoda on the top of her head 
 and her head in the air to increase her 
 height, gathered up her books and went out, 
 calling back from the corridor, "If you 
 don't stop gaping at that magnificence, 
 you'll miss your train." 
 
 Still Betty lingered, enjoying the un- 
 wonted sight of her parlor swept, garnished, 
 and in order. It was a charming room, 
 with a spirit of its own. None of the silly 
 souvenirs common to some college rooms 
 cluttered it up. Equally refreshing was the 
 absence of plaster lions, Bodenhausen Ma- 
 donnas, and reproductions of Gibson's draw- 
 ings. The decorations, curtains, and rugs 
 all harmonized into one pleasant, soothing 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 127 
 
 color plan, the furniture was carved oak, old 
 and interesting, the couch was covered with 
 huge satisfying pillows, on the walls hung 
 delicate water colors and Copley prints. 
 The books, too, the final test of a room, 
 were not the usual Emertons, Sellars, and 
 Adamses, but Stevensons, Balzacs, Thack- 
 erays, and their fellows. A deep bowl on 
 the table filled with daffodils made a little 
 spring in the November day. A table with 
 a tea-kettle, a plate of thin, crispy lettuce 
 sandwiches, and dishes of bonbons showed 
 that the guests were not to " feast deep on 
 lovely sights " only. 
 
 " c A man can mar a home, but only a 
 woman can make it,' " murmured the owner 
 of the parlor with an amused remembrance 
 of a visit she and her mother had made that 
 fall to her Freshman brother at Yale, to help 
 him settle. 
 
 " Do something to these things, won't 
 you ? " he had implored, with a helpless wave 
 towards the chairs, tables, and pictures, 
 which had fallen into Anglo-Saxon attitudes 
 at measured intervals about the room. "It 
 
128 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 looks like a combination of church, furni- 
 ture store, and country hotel now." 
 
 " My aunt and a somebody with her are 
 going to visit me an hour on their way 
 from Albany to New York," she called over 
 the transom of the other half of the alley- 
 way. " You're not to go in my beauty room 
 and muss it up. After they've gone, we'll 
 eat all the food they leave. Do you hear? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," came in a drowsy voice from 
 within. 
 
 " We are very fond of our room," said 
 Betty in her best company voice an hour 
 later as she led her guests down the corri- 
 dor. "Three of us " she stopped. 
 
 A desolation lay before her such as some 
 army of furniture-devouring locusts might 
 have left behind them. Curtains, rugs, 
 chairs, couch, table, pictures, all were 
 gone. Even the bowl that held the flowers 
 was not. The daffodils hung their mortified 
 heads over the edge of a milk-pitcher. 
 Only the tea-table and the desks remained. 
 Worse even than the nakedness of the land 
 was it that boxes, bundles of newspapers, 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 129 
 
 portions of girls' wardrobes, and a heap of 
 shoes lay scattered about the floor. 
 
 For a minute Betty stood perfectly still. 
 What her family tenderly called " a nervous 
 attack " had seized her. Then she laughed. 
 What was the use in getting in a rage, any- 
 how ? 
 
 " Some enemy hath done this," she cried, 
 between spurts of laughter. " Sit down, 
 won't you ? Oh, you can't." She brought 
 chairs from the bedrooms. Such as were 
 not weak in important members were of an 
 institutional hardness. 
 
 Cf Emily Fullham ! Nancy ! Come meet 
 my aunt ! " she called. 
 
 There was a slight rustle as of an invol- 
 untary leap towards flight, but in an instant 
 two girls entered with polite greetings. 
 
 " Little Em'ly, what galoot has been at 
 this room ? " demanded Betty, then blushed 
 fiery red as she thought, "Aunt Laura'll 
 think I'm a choice bit if I let fall any more 
 such conversational pearls as that ! " 
 
 " Why, Betty, May Merchant and Anna- 
 bel Steen came while you were- out, and 
 
ijo VASSAR STORIES 
 
 took away your things. They said Janet 
 told them they might have whatever they 
 wanted. They dumped everything out of 
 the couch and the drawers, that's where 
 those things came from." 
 
 " And she knew I was to have guests ! " 
 
 " Oh, well, you couldn't expect her to re- 
 member little things like that to-day when 
 she can't on just ordinary occasions." 
 
 "This is Phil. Day, Aunt Laura. We 
 have a great reception to-night, much gowns 
 and a number of young gents gentlemen 
 to see how we look in them. My room- 
 mate is chairman of the committee. She's 
 responsible for the whole thing, she and the 
 president of Phil." 
 
 "Are these raids on one another of fre- 
 quent occurrence?" asked the guest who 
 wasn't Aunt Laura. 
 
 "When there's a Hall Play on, or a 
 chapter one, or anything like this, the girls 
 swoop down on you for every last stick you 
 own. Other times we just borrow soap and 
 hats and note-books and Gym. suits and 
 money, and things like that." 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 131 
 
 " But among so many do not losses 
 occur?" 
 
 " Oh, you never get anything back unless 
 you go for it, and not always then," an- 
 swered Betty. 
 
 "My beautiful bandanna pillow!" said 
 Emily, with a doleful laugh. 
 
 " My two pairs of evening gloves!" said 
 the other girl. 
 
 " My Japanese screen, my bust of Dante, 
 my blue sash, my Oh, many and many 
 a my ! But the worst borrow and keep I 
 know was Miss Belton's silhouette. 
 
 " We had a regularly gorgeous Trig. Cere- 
 monies in our class, Aunt Laura, if I say it 
 as shouldn't, that's a kind of play the 
 Sophomores give to celebrate the end of 
 mathematics forever. One scene had an 
 old-fashioned room in it. We had a spin- 
 ning-wheel, an old chest, old chairs, and all 
 the furniture we wanted. But it was hard 
 to find anything to hang on the walls. 
 Somebody discovered a huge silhouette in 
 Miss Belton's room, and said it was just the 
 thing, only she'd never lend it in the world, 
 
132 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 because it was a portrait of one of the pro- 
 fessors that she bought at her first Senior 
 auction. She went to the auction with her 
 Senior c crush ' (they had such things in 
 those days), and the crush blessed it, and 
 the professor wrote her name on the back, 
 and altogether it was a prize relic. I sought 
 her and I besought her ; and, though she was 
 exceeding loath, I bore it away. I made 
 the girls promise to watch it with all their 
 eyes. In case of a fire or an earthquake or 
 an assault by the audience, they were to seize 
 that silhouette and bear it to a place of 
 safety, though all else should perish. 
 
 " After the Ceremonies were over, I was 
 so excited and elated I never once thought 
 of that professor. I wouldn't have remem- 
 bered my own father if he'd been hanging 
 on the wall. Well, sirs, when I went over 
 to the Hall the next morning, that precious 
 souvenir was gone. I've never seen it since, 
 though I offered rewards and sought it with 
 tears." 
 
 " Wasn't Miss Belton angry ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I never went near her 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 133 
 
 to explain. I didn't dare. Do let me give 
 you tea and some sandwiches/' jerking her- 
 self back to the duties of a hostess. 
 
 "There, that's over/' announced Betty, 
 returning to the room after escorting her 
 guests to the cars. " The dear old parties 
 were sort o' shocked at some things, me for 
 one, I guess ; but when they left they said, 
 c 'e liked it all/ or words of similar import. 
 Where did all you babes come from ? " 
 sitting down in the place where the couch 
 should have been, and looking around on 
 the half-dozen girls likewise seated on the 
 floor. 
 
 " Molly and I have been making up Gym. 
 cuts," "Just come home from town/' " Been 
 all the afternoon in the library working on 
 my constitutional history." 
 
 " Betty," the door was hurtled back, "I've 
 got a telegram " 
 
 " Oh, Eleanor ! " She was Betty's room- 
 mate. 
 
 " From sister, telling me to meet her and 
 father in New York to-day, go to the opera 
 to-night, and bat around generally to-mor- 
 
i 3 4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 row. Isn't it lucky I haven't any guest for 
 Phil. ? Can I catch that five train, do you 
 think ? " 
 
 " Yes, if you hustle. We'll all help." 
 
 " I'll have to have that dress," pulling at 
 the buttons of Betty's gown. 
 
 " My lands ! It's all the garment I have ! 
 Everything's in the laundry or ripped up 
 except this or my c pike.' I'm going to 
 wear that to-night," remonstrated Betty, be- 
 ginning to slip out of it, however. 
 
 " I haven't a cloth suit to my name yet, 
 and I can't go to New York in a golf skirt. 
 You're the only girl that's just my size ! " 
 
 " Take it ! take it ! I can be clothed in 
 a bath-robe till evening." 
 
 " You can't stop to brush your hair : it 
 looks passing queer, but people will think 
 it a new style. They say Vassar girls are 
 always six months ahead of the rest of the 
 world," went on Betty, rummaging out a 
 battered dress-suit case. 
 
 Emily counted the united funds of the 
 two alley-ways, to see if their total equalled 
 the fare to New York. Anna Adams ran 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 135 
 
 for an umbrella. Molly Omstead buttoned 
 Eleanor's boots. Sally Dean dried the daf- 
 fodil stems before pinning them into the 
 traveller's coat. Eleanor buttoned, tied, and 
 clasped various bands and belts, giving direc- 
 tions, like a general to his staff, meanwhile. 
 
 " Sal, run down to the laundry, won't you, 
 dearie, and get me my clean handkerchiefs ? 
 If you don't see mine, take any one's that 
 are respectable, in the unmarked room, you 
 know; and just go into the lost office 
 off Chapel coming back, and snatch a pair 
 of rubbers you think will fit me. IVe lost 
 mine. And, oh, Betty, Neil's got my fur 
 collar, ask her for it : she has my silk scarf, 
 too. I don't know where my gloves are, 
 Em. Hunt around in the most unlikely 
 places you see, the washstand, and the ward- 
 robe shelf. Nan Adams, do stick a few pins 
 in my hair, it's just about ready to fall off. 
 Goodbye, you dear old souls, I hope I 
 haven't killed you. I'll bring you all some 
 Huyler's." 
 
 " Well," gasped Betty, as Eleanor disap- 
 peared down the corridor with a girl on 
 
136 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 either side to carry her belongings. " I feel 
 a thought fatigued ! This is the day of my 
 life to wash and iron my hair. Help your- 
 selves to food, dear friends, there's more in 
 the box in Jan's room, and the tea is in my 
 desk, lowest drawer." She appeared from 
 her bedroom in a denuded - looking silk 
 wrapper. 
 
 "Betty! what have you done to that? 
 You look like a plucked chicken." 
 
 " Isn't it chaste ? I ripped all the trim- 
 ming off to put fresh on, then I never got 
 around to it. Nobody's in the Senior 
 Parlor, I hope," peering cautiously out. 
 " I've got to get hot water anyhow, whether 
 guests have come or no. Stick up c En- 
 gaged/ Nan." 
 
 " Mustn't mermaids be pretty dears ?" she 
 said when she returned, shaking wet, string- 
 ing locks around her face. " I wish those 
 committee girls had left a few cushions for 
 the family. The floor is uncommon hard. 
 Pab, please." 
 
 Every one ate and drank silently, basking 
 in the comfortable sense that to-morrow was 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 137 
 
 lectureless Saturday, "la treve de Dieu." 
 The door opened without a knock. 
 
 " Hi, Bet, having a ball ? " said the new- 
 comer, known to her friends as the Japanese 
 Cat from a fancied resemblance between her 
 and the pictures of that domestic animal 
 which adorn Celestial decorations. 
 
 " I call it plain actions, Cat, to walk right 
 in over c Engaged/ " said the owner of the 
 room. 
 
 " Engaged nothing ! If you think there's 
 one up, you're mistaken," said the new-comer, 
 beginning to eat the crumbs out of the box. 
 
 " Must have blown down." 
 
 " I took it," called a voice over the tran- 
 som. " I wanted one, and I couldn't find 
 a scrap of paper in this whole house." 
 
 " Upon my soul ! " murmured Betty : 
 " this borrowing custom has gone as far as 
 I think proper. Oh, here's some one else. 
 Come in ! " 
 
 A very tall, very handsome, very well- 
 dressed young woman stood on the thresh- 
 old. Her smile of greeting turned to one 
 of amused surprise as she saw the disorderly 
 
138 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 room, the girls lounging on the floor or the 
 window-seat in Friday afternoon attitudes 
 and costumes, and the damp, Medusa-like 
 Betty. 
 
 " Miss Clafford," murmured the Japanese 
 Cat. Betty said nothing. Her brown face 
 was really pale. 
 
 Miss Clafford was a new teacher whose 
 manners and customs were exciting much 
 interest among the girls. They admired her 
 deeply, not because she was a Ph.D. and 
 had written a book which the critics praised, 
 nor because she was a delightful woman of 
 the world, but because she was both in one. 
 Betty stood in great awe of her. She had 
 ventured to call on her once, in her minute, 
 artistic room, but she had not yet found 
 courage to ask her into her own room. To 
 think she should see it now for the first 
 time ! Betty could not rise above that. 
 
 " I wanted to talk to you, Miss Blake," 
 began Miss Clafford, cc about that little club 
 we are thinking of forming." 
 
 cc Club ? " murmured Betty dazedly. 
 
 Emily placed a chair for the visitor, to the 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 139 
 
 horror of the others, who knew the infirmity 
 of its joints. Miss ClafFord began to talk 
 easily. Betty listened in abjectness. She 
 could not escape from her disorderly room 
 and her own wet, draggled appearance. 
 Some one apologized for the confusion. 
 Miss ClafFord laughed, and said something 
 bright about being in the hands of one's 
 friends at such seasons. 
 
 " She thinks just a chair or so and a 
 couple of pillows have been taken/' thought 
 Betty bitterly. 
 
 " My friend, Eleanor Hale, lives here. I 
 want you to see her house," said a girl's 
 voice at the door. A deep voice, belonging 
 to a man, answered. 
 
 Some one said, " Come." Betty always 
 maintained it was Miss ClafFord. In walked 
 a girl, her elegant mother, her dignified fa- 
 ther, her irreproachable brother. The situ- 
 ation was too serious for any embarrassment. 
 Betty, her hair hastily bundled into a knob, 
 rose, greeted her guests with warmth and 
 grace. Every one seconded her. The fam- 
 ily party went on its way, taking Miss Claf- 
 
140 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ford with it, filled with amused appreciation 
 for a roomful of entertaining girls. 
 
 " Hang out a small-pox flag, quick ! " 
 cried Betty. "If I experience any more 
 such raids, either to borrow or to view me, 
 I shall have N. P. immediately/' Betty 
 maintained that nervous prostration was such 
 an every-day affair lately that it took entirely 
 too long to say it the number of times nec- 
 essary. 
 
 " We must come in, Bet," called a voice. 
 
 "There's no one here for you to see," 
 called back Betty. " Miss Blake is dead 
 and buried, her executors are now listening 
 to her last will and testament." 
 
 " What have you been doing here ? " 
 asked one of the two girls as she walked in. 
 " Going home before the Mid-years ? " 
 
 "If you have come to borrow, you may 
 have the carpet or myself, there is naught 
 else here." 
 
 " That's just what I want you, honey," 
 said one of the girls, a pretty blonde no 
 larger than Betty. 
 
 "Me? Just as I am without one dry 
 hair P " 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 141 
 
 " John's coming to Phil. ! " 
 
 " Oh, Carolyn, how good !" 
 
 "Oh, but there are horrid complications !" 
 
 " I don't believe it. Nothing connected 
 with John can be horrid." 
 
 " Mr. Gilbert is coming, too." 
 
 "Who's he? Oh, I see. You want to 
 devote all your time to John, and so you 
 want me, even little me, to entertain this 
 Mr. What's-his-name." 
 
 " I want you to be me." 
 
 " I to be you ? Have you had a touch 
 by sun, dear?" 
 
 "You know John is so so sort of " 
 
 "Yes, 1 know, don't stop to explain his 
 character." 
 
 " He wouldn't like it if any other man was 
 here when he was, especially after he'd come 
 hundreds of miles and had only the one 
 night " 
 
 " I'll take the other man away the minute 
 he strikes the front hall, and you shan't see 
 him again till the Glee Club sings c Good- 
 night.' " 
 
 " I mustn't see him at all. He and John 
 
i 4 a VASSAR STORIES 
 
 are the deadliest enemies ! I found it out 
 when I began to tell him about Helen's 
 Western trip. As soon as I mentioned the 
 Mr. Gilbert who had been so attentive to 
 them, he looked outraged, said he knew him 
 at college, and hoped he'd never hear his 
 name again, he despised him utterly. I had 
 to change the subject, quick. Of course, 
 Mr. Gilbert will have to sit with me at the 
 lecture, as he's my guest, even if you do 
 take him in charge afterward. John's whole 
 evening will be ruined. I can just see him 
 getting stiffer and colder, and probably leav- 
 ing at the end of the second dance." 
 
 "Well, for my part, if I had a man I 
 should train him into There, he's a 
 hero and a saint. I won't say a word agin 
 him. But why, oh, why, did you ask this 
 other man, anyhow ? " 
 
 " I never dreamed John could come. 
 Last year, when mother and Helen were 
 out West exploring around, they met him 
 (his father and mine are old friends). He 
 was awfully courteous and nice to them. 
 Nobody ever supposed he'd come East till 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 143 
 
 goodness knows when. But he has this fall. 
 Mother always said she wanted to be es- 
 pecially kind to him because of his father 
 and because he had been so nice to her. 
 But you know the whole family is South for 
 the winter. When mother heard that he 
 was in town, she wrote for me to invite him 
 up here to Phil. He probably wouldn't 
 care to come, but, anyhow, it was all the 
 family could do for him in the way of hos- 
 pitality. He accepted yesterday, and John 
 to-day. Everything will be ruined if they 
 meet, yet I must entertain Mr. Gilbert." 
 
 "Goon." 
 
 " Don't you see what I want? " 
 
 " I must say I don't." 
 
 " You must be I, Miss Styvert." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " This Gilbert man hasn't seen me since I 
 was a little girl (he used to be a horrid 
 shouty boy, I remember). He wouldn't 
 know me from any other face o' clay, if he 
 saw me. You will be Miss Styvert, will 
 entertain him charmingly, dance with him, 
 show him around college, and do everything 
 
i 4 4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 that I could a great deal better than I. 
 He'll go off to his ranch thinking that 
 mother has a delightful daughter, and that 
 the Styvert family have done all they could 
 under the circumstances to return his hospi- 
 tality." 
 
 " Do you mean I am to pass myself off 
 to this strange man as another girl ? Caro- 
 lyn Styvert, I can't and I won't ! " 
 
 " Now, Betty, you can beautifally. You're 
 the cleverest actor in college. Nobody can 
 wiggle around a corner in class the way you 
 can. You know you can get any earthly 
 joy out of anybody if you stop being fero- 
 cious and begin to blarney. I wouldn't 
 ask to borrow you this way, bodily, so to 
 speak, if I knew any other scheme to get 
 out of the box. I can't ignore Mr. Gilbert, 
 and I can't make John unhappy. Oh, 
 Betty dear, you're so fascinating, and quick, 
 and resourceful, you could carry off any situ- 
 ation. Please don't desert me ! " 
 
 " I realize that I am being won by 
 honeyed words rather than by the rights of 
 the case. It's business under false pretences, 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 145 
 
 which is a hanging offence, I'm thinking, 
 and I shall make some never- to-be-mended 
 break, as sure as the clock ; but for your 
 sake and that of the cran highly organ- 
 ized John I'll do it. You've got to post 
 me up on family history, and cowboys, and 
 his early youth, though. And, see here, 
 I haven't a frock worthy the occasion. 
 Mother's dressmaker's been going to send 
 me my new evening gown for the last 
 month. I didn't care when I thought I 
 was going to sit with the populace in the 
 gallery, but if I'm to have a little guest, I 
 must wear something more festive than a 
 white c pike.' " 
 
 "You shall have my new muslin de sote, 
 you dear, obliging, good little soul." 
 
 " The one you're going to take the eyes 
 out of John with ! Thank you, I'm not 
 such a monster. My old pink silk will do 
 if you'll lend me that huge fichu of yours 
 and your grandmother's silver comb, and 
 find something for my feet besides red bed- 
 room slippers or bicycle boots." 
 
 "I'll do anything on earth for you, Betty, 
 whenever you need me." 
 
146 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 "You'll probably have to bail me out of 
 jail for perjury and counterfeiting, later. 
 You can say at the trial that I was hypno- 
 tized into my course of deception, for I cer- 
 tainly am. Otherwise I should have firmness 
 enough to refuse at once. f I misdoubt 
 me/ " she added gloomily, " c if any good 
 can come of promiscuous borrowings in a 
 haythen country/ ' 
 
 The corridors had begun to fill with girls 
 fluttering expectantly about, when Betty 
 stepped from her room. She had been up 
 to Carolyn three separate times during the 
 afternoon to tell her she could not be bor- 
 rowed. Each time she had been implored 
 into reconsenting. Now, fairly started in 
 the affair, the excitement of it had begun 
 to work. She would succeed, and she'd 
 have some fun out of it, too. 
 
 Betty was all a delicious umber color, 
 hair, eyes, and complexion. Dressed in a 
 queer, autumnal pink gown, with a long 
 waist and a fichu of old lace, her fluffy hair 
 held in a top-knot by a tall silver comb, and 
 high-heeled bronze slippers on her little 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 147 
 
 feet, she might have been her own Creole 
 great-grandmother the night she danced at 
 Washington's ball. 
 
 All the girls had come forth, to quote the 
 newspaper account of the reception, " from 
 grubs into butterflies/' Even a plain girl 
 is pretty in a light, low-necked gown, and 
 pretty ones are altogether lovely. Groups 
 of friends were hurrying off together to 
 secure front seats in the gallery, from which 
 they could see and criticise other people's 
 guests. These girls would sit on the stairs 
 after the lecture was over, watching the life 
 in the corridors below, dance once with 
 some one else's man, raid the waiters for 
 supplies of salad and ices, which they would 
 carry away for a private spread in some 
 room, and perhaps have as much fun, in 
 a different way, as those who rush about try- 
 ing to get the men they are with back to the 
 girls (never at the place they appointed) who 
 are running these men, and return to the 
 place where they are to meet their next part- 
 ner before the dance is all over. Girls are 
 not as experienced in these matters as men. 
 
i 4 8 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Therefore much confusion is the result that 
 night, and many explanations the next 
 morning. " Hunted for you everywhere, 
 honest, so I just took him down in the Sen- 
 ior Parlor through the interval/' cc He 
 couldn't dance one step, but he believed he 
 could. I thought you'd never come to take 
 him off my hands." " I didn't mean to cut 
 my dances with your brother, but I must 
 have misunderstood your number, so " 
 
 Those who have no guests sit serenely 
 aloft, enjoying the lights, the music, and 
 the many pretty girls in artistic frocks, also, 
 though viewed from afar, the good-looking, 
 athletic young men from Yale, Princeton, 
 and Harvard. 
 
 The adaptability of the "eternal feminine," 
 a trait or a gift ? fostered by college life, 
 shows itself in the girl who yesterday played 
 basket ball with pluck and dash, this morn- 
 ing translated a Horatian ode into mellow, 
 flowing English, and now stands in a grace- 
 ful attitude, listening to her guest's story 
 with such appreciative interest that he will 
 call her, to-morrow, the cleverest girl he ever 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 149 
 
 met, though the truth is he did all the talk- 
 ing himself. Perhaps she is, for she is wise 
 enough to know that " when a woman speaks 
 she is working for herself, but when she is 
 silent Nature is working for her." 
 
 Occasionally a dancer, hurrying from one 
 room to another, snatches time to whisper 
 to some of the on-lookers, " See that tall 
 man over there? He asked me what I 
 studied. Wasn't that delicious ? " or " That 
 babe yonder is a professor in a college. I 
 mixed him up with Neil's brother, and asked 
 him if it was his first year at college. I 
 thought I'd please the brother, for he isn't 
 out of the prep, school yet," or " Did that 
 gigantic party ruin my gown when he walked 
 up the train ? Look quick." 
 
 Betty saw Carolyn going off towards 
 Chapel on John's arm, so radiant to have 
 all made smooth for his evening that she 
 never noticed her borrowed double. 
 
 " Now then," thought the double, as the 
 messenger handed her a card, "come up 
 under the bat, Miss Betty, no, Miss Caro- 
 lyn, and show what you can do." 
 
150 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Mr. William Word well Gilbert certainly 
 wore nice shoes and had an agreeable voice. 
 It was a long way up to his coat lapel, so he 
 must be tall. This was as high as Betty 
 dare look till they were seated in Chapel. 
 
 " I feel as if I were a chicken stealer," she 
 thought as she sank into her seat. "He 
 doesn't know it if I am, but he'll think 
 something queer if I act this way." Where- 
 upon she faced her guest boldly, though 
 conversation did not flow from her as yet. 
 Fortunately, the guest was a ready talker 
 himself. 
 
 " A friend of mine, Fairbairn Blake " 
 Mr. Gilbert was in the midst of a story. 
 Betty jumped at the name. Blake was 
 common enough, but surely nobody but her 
 own big brother owned the two names 
 together. 
 
 " Do you know any one by that name, 
 Miss Styvert ? " asked her guest. 
 
 " No yes a little," with a blush which 
 even her brown cheeks could not hide. 
 
 The guest smiled. 
 
 "Thinks I'm a bread-and-butter school- 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 151 
 
 girl, or else I'm vastly interested in his 
 friend and ashamed to show it," she thought 
 with inward rage. 
 
 "It may be the same man, he has a sister 
 here at Vassar, I believe: do you know her?" 
 
 Betty spoke in a determined voice. 
 
 " It must be Betty Blake. I know her." 
 She was keeping hold of herself that she 
 might not rush out of Chapel. 
 
 The girl in the next pew turned and 
 stared at Betty with an amazed face. It was 
 the Japanese Cat, and she had overheard. 
 She touched Betty's lap. 
 
 " I want you to meet " 
 
 An introduction ! Betty and Carolyn had 
 so arranged all the dances that none save 
 those initiated in the secret might be en- 
 countered. But Chapel had not been re- 
 membered. 
 
 " Will you please move down to the end 
 of the seat?" said Betty, ignoring the Cat 
 utterly. " I feel the air from the window." 
 
 The next minute she discovered that the 
 window was closed, a fact patent to her 
 guest's eyes as well as her own. 
 
152 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " He now thinks me a lunatic and very 
 rude," she said inwardly, recalling the push 
 which she had given him in her anxiety to 
 get away. 
 
 She began to talk rapidly, inwardly pray- 
 ing for the appearance of the lecturer. 
 
 " Which is Miss Blake ? " asked the man 
 in the pause Betty made to catch her breath. 
 " I saw Blake last night. I happened to 
 tell him I was coming up here, and he said 
 to meet his sister if I could." 
 
 " I don't see her," said the miserable 
 Betty. " Here is the lecturer." 
 
 All through the lecture she was thinking, 
 " It'll never do for Carolyn to be Miss 
 Blake since he knows Fair. How can I 
 get hold of her to tell her?" 
 
 Carolyn had promised to be in the Lecture- 
 Room at the end of the first dance, to take 
 Mr. Gilbert from Betty. The latter was 
 then to meet John in the Faculty Parlor, If 
 she could only get this wretched man there 
 before Carolyn, and waylay her in the cor- 
 ridor, all would be well. She hurried him 
 out of the dancing-hall, up the stairs at a 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 153 
 
 round pace, treading on various girls in her 
 ascent. There was Carolyn by the elevator ; 
 and, yes ! she was coming towards them. 
 
 " I believe you are hunting for me, aren't 
 you, Carolyn ? " said that young woman in a 
 perfectly calm voice. 
 
 Betty tried to slip behind her partner ; but 
 he was provokingly polite, and stepped back, 
 too. There was no chance to warn Carolyn 
 by making up a face. With the stiffness and 
 precision of some manager announcing a new 
 member of his troupe, she said, " I want you 
 to meet, Mr. Gilbert, Miss White." 
 
 Carolyn was a self-possessed girl, yet she 
 could not restrain a violent blink, succeeded 
 by an agitated and questioning smile. Betty 
 glared and frowned portentously, too des- 
 perate to mind the guest. 
 
 "Til have to find Harriet Soule. She 
 has the next dance with him, and she'll be 
 sure to speak of Carolyn as Miss Blake if I 
 don't tell her." This was one of the two 
 girls taken into the secret to help entertain. 
 
 Finding Harriet was not so easy. Betty 
 wound and pushed through the crowd on 
 
154 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the stairs and on second corridor, peered 
 into all the parlors, darted in and out of all 
 the little recesses given over to divans and 
 nan-dancers. She saw John standing pa- 
 tiently in the Faculty Parlor waiting for her, 
 but she could not stop for him. She thrust 
 herself into a group of girls and men, think- 
 ing that among them she saw Harriet's black 
 net gown. 
 
 " Miss Blake, may I " said one. 
 
 Betty pulled herself away, leaving her 
 friend full of wrath. She had seen Harriet 
 coming out of the hall. The dance was 
 over. She was on her way to find that 
 nightmare of a man. 
 
 " Harriet ! " She planted herself directly 
 in her path, the crowd was too dense to 
 admit of drawing any one aside. " Miss 
 Blake's name is Miss White." 
 
 "What?" blankly. 
 
 Betty glanced at the man with Harriet. 
 cc I'll never see him again," she thought. 
 Then aloud, " You are not to call Carolyn 
 Styvert Blake, but White. Do you under- 
 stand? " savagely. 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 155 
 
 The other nodded. Betty caught a 
 glimpse of an astonished look on the man's 
 face, then hurried on. 
 
 " I shall dance every dance with that man 
 myself. He can think I don't know any 
 girls or I have fallen in love with him at first 
 sight, I don't care which. I can't trust him 
 to any one else," she groaned to herself. 
 
 Mr. Gilbert was so good a dancer and so 
 interesting a companion that the strain on 
 Betty's nerves began to relax. They went 
 down the corridor at the end of the waltz to 
 get lemonade. 
 
 " Hello, a fellow I know," said the man. 
 " Shall we speak to him ? " 
 
 Betty looked around. It was Harriet 
 Soule's partner, and a Freshman. 
 
 " I don't know the girl," she cried desper- 
 ately, but the other did not hear. He was 
 shaking hands with the man and bowing to 
 the girl. 
 
 cc Mr. [some unintelligible name] , 
 
 Miss Styvert," with awful distinctness. " I 
 suppose no introduction is necessary with 
 you," smiling at Betty and the Freshman. 
 
156 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 "I have seen Miss Bl " 
 
 " This year's Freshman class is so large 
 that the Seniors don't know all its members 
 yet," broke in Betty very loudly. The 
 Freshman was an acquaintance of Carolyn's, 
 and was perfectly aware who Betty was. 
 "This is my favorite two-step, goodbye." 
 She walked down the corridor, leaving the 
 man no choice but to follow. 
 
 " I wonder if I look as haggard as I feel," 
 trying to catch a glimpse of herself in a mir- 
 ror. " If I live through to-night, I am re- 
 solved to lead a better life. If it was my 
 own plan, I'd up and tell him the truth now, 
 even if he got as mad as a hatter, but the 
 Styverts are so punctilious, and Carolyn said 
 he was, too. Oh, I suppose I'll live till 
 midnight, somehow. Nice bringing up 
 he must think I have ! So must Harriet's 
 man. Pretty, graceful manners ! " 
 
 " Betty ! Wait a minute, Betty Blake ! " 
 The voice came from somewhere close to her. 
 
 Betty fairly ran down the corridor. A 
 knot of people were talking by the stairs. 
 They filled all the space, and were as dense 
 as a wall. 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 157 
 
 cc I heard some one say Miss Blake's 
 name as we passed," said the man. " She 
 must be right near. I'd like to see her." 
 
 Betty looked straight ahead without a 
 word. People had never acted so at Phil, 
 before, rushing out at one from rooms, seiz- 
 ing one for introductions, and recognizing 
 old friends half-way down the corridor. She 
 had forgotten about her desire for the two- 
 step. She wanted to get some place where 
 no one could see them. Solitude was the 
 only safety. A curtained corner at the end 
 of second was empty. Betty hurried to 
 it, and sat down. She laughed a little. It 
 wasn't life and death, after all. And, really, 
 the situations had been so absurd. 
 
 cc How many years is it since we used to 
 play together ? " began the man. 
 
 " It must have been in a previous incar- 
 nation," laughed Betty. 
 
 "You haven't forgotten the good times 
 summers, on the farm, have you ? " bending 
 a little nearer. 
 
 " Never spent an hour on a farm in my 
 life. Hope he isn't going into the flora and 
 
158 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 fauna of such regions," thought Betty, then 
 aloud with emphasis, " Oh, no." 
 
 " How's that little cousin who used to be 
 with us so much ? " 
 
 "If I only knew even the sex of It!" 
 inwardly. " Well. Grown-up, like the rest 
 of us." 
 
 " What was his name, anyhow ? " 
 
 " Hasn't your exciting life on a Western 
 ranch blotted out that humdrum little farm ? 
 There, that was a neat way of turning a 
 corner," she congratulated herself. 
 
 "You'll have to help me out on that 
 name, Miss Sty vert. It was a queer one, 
 too, that I'd be likely to remember." 
 
 "Why, oh, why, didn't I get a list of 
 Carolyn's relations, unto the third and fourth 
 generation ? " Aloud, " Ethelbert Jinkins," 
 then inwardly, " That is the name of one of 
 my cousins. It's a relief to tell the truth 
 
 once." 
 
 " That doesn't sound like it." 
 " I think I know my own cousin's name," 
 with dignity. 
 
 " Do vou remember the fort we built in 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 159 
 
 the brook, and the day we made ourselves 
 a little hut to live in forever ? " getting still 
 nearer. 
 
 " The sentimental Bit ! Won't I rejoice 
 over Carolyn with tales of how she played 
 with the boys in her infancy ? I always 
 knew somebody began to make love to her 
 as soon as she could walk." The thought 
 so charmed Betty that she smiled benignly 
 on the stranger. 
 
 "Where's Mr. Dimont now? I always 
 had a great respect for him, he was such a 
 serious character." 
 
 " He's he's there still, on the farm, you 
 know," desperately. " I'll die soon," to 
 herself. 
 
 " Busy and important as ever? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, he drives everybody to town 
 now. He's married." 
 
 " Married ! " 
 
 " I mean divorced. No, no, his wife 
 died." 
 
 " Married ! Divorced ! Really, Mr. Di- 
 mont is getting on in his ways." The man 
 laughed low and with evident pleasure. 
 
160 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 "I've done it now! Mr. Dimont is 
 probably some old woman-hater or an enfant 
 of unmatrimonial years." 
 
 " Dogs of the Dandy Dimont breed are 
 very bright, I admit," went on the man. 
 
 "Dogs!" jerked out Betty. Then in 
 rage and confusion, " I have a dance now 
 with another man. I'll take you to your 
 partner." 
 
 She walked so fast that further reminis- 
 cences were impossible. She was sure she 
 heard the man laugh to himself. Could he 
 suspect? Around the corner by the musi- 
 cians she darted, almost into the arms of 
 John, who was peering over the heads of 
 the crowd for some one. 
 
 "Why, Betty Blake!" he cried in a 
 hideously loud voice. " I haven't seen you 
 this evening. Will Gilbert, you in this part 
 of the world ? " Betty caught John's arm. 
 She might be able to prevent bodily injury 
 to the other man. John and the stranger 
 pumped arms up and down violently amid 
 much " Glad to see yous," " How'd you 
 get heres ? " 
 
LENDER NOR BORROWER 161 
 
 "John," too amazed to think of her 
 secret, <c aren't you and Mr. Gilbert deadly 
 enemies ? " 
 
 " Not to my knowledge. Pardon me, 
 there's Carolyn, Miss Sty vert, Will. I'll 
 have to leave you." 
 
 " There was another Gilbert at college 
 with John, possibly that's the deadly enemy. 
 Miss Blake, now the cat is officially out of 
 the bag, won't you tell me why you have 
 tried to be Miss Styvert all the evening?" 
 
 " Have you known all the time ? " 
 
 "Yes. I told you I saw your brother 
 last night. I was in his rooms. He showed 
 me a picture of his Vassar sister, that I might 
 be able to identify her. I have a good 
 memory for faces." 
 
 " And to think," mourned Betty, " that 
 I was taught to write in copy-books each 
 one of which contained, c Honesty is the 
 best policy/ ' 
 
 c< Suppose we go back to that agreeable 
 corner, and you confess the whole dark 
 crime." 
 
 After the Glee Club had sung, the guests 
 
1 62 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 had gone, and the corridors were dark and 
 lonely, Carolyn stole down to Betty's room. 
 She found her curled up in bed, and reciting 
 to an audience, likewise ready for bed, the 
 tragedies of the evening. 
 
 " Carolyn, your man not John, the un- 
 attached one is a terrible nice person. I 
 purred all the last of the evening, I was that 
 pleased. But my sufferings before John's 
 revelation ! You just listen to me, every- 
 body. I'm never going to borrow anything 
 again, and I'm never going to lend anything. 
 My experiences to-day, winding up with the 
 loan of my truth, sobriety, and sanity, have 
 been such that I hereby take a vow unto 
 myself. Who came in just then ? " Calling 
 into the dark parlor, "Nan Adams? If 
 you're after my steamer rug for your bed, 
 it's in the left-hand corner. Take it with 
 my blessing. You'll never get another thing 
 out of me." Then to the laughing girls, 
 " ( This time don't count.' " 
 
THE CLAN 
 
The Clan 
 
 IT was Bonfire Night on the lake. 
 Every one who could get, by any means 
 whatsoever, a pair of skates, whether they 
 could use them or not, was down on the ice. 
 Laughter, loud, jolly voices, and the crack 
 of hockey sticks struck out high echoes from 
 the bank. Beginners who had been able to 
 keep up as long as the band did, promptly 
 fell down when the music ceased. When it 
 started up again, all skated and all sang. 
 
 Long lines of girls, their hands on one 
 another's shoulders, prison lock-step fashion, 
 swept up the lake and back, singing. Rows 
 of girls, twelve broad, the weak skaters in 
 the centre, swung slowly along, also singing. 
 Solitary figures flew by, recognizable for an 
 instant in the glare of the fire. Little groups 
 of twos and threes cut " eights " in the ice 
 together, and did other post-graduate acts, 
 or wavered excitedly along with thrills and 
 165 
 
1 66 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 cries of alarm. A few bloodless beings shiv- 
 ered by the fire or were content to be pushed 
 about in chairs. But every one sang and 
 laughed, and was for the night and the hour 
 without care or sorrow. . 
 
 " Race you round the island and back ! " 
 cried a skater, as the music stopped while 
 the musicians thawed our their fingers. 
 
 " All right ! " answered the skater next to 
 her, who was doing the " double roll." 
 "Now, one, two off!" 
 
 The two swept up the lake around the 
 mound of earth called politely " the island," 
 and back, past the fire, to the goal, 
 the dock where, in summer, the boats are 
 tied. 
 
 " Come on, everybody, double chain up 
 and down to the last waltz ! " called a tall 
 girl, starting out from a bunch of others. 
 " Here, Elizabeth, catch on ! Hurry up, 
 Myra ! " 
 
 The bunch separated into a long line ex- 
 tending half-way across the lake. 
 
 " Are you ready ? " cried the leader. 
 " Where's Ethel Oakley ? Catch on there, 
 
THE CLAN 167 
 
 Ethel ! " to a solitary figure skating on 
 rather unsteadily just ahead. The skater 
 did not turn, though she was directly in the 
 path. 
 
 " That's not Ethel," said some one. 
 
 The line wavered for an instant, then 
 opened. 
 
 "Whoever it is, give me your hand, 
 quick ! Don't break the line ! " cried the 
 leader again. " Cross your other hand to 
 Nan there, now ! and swing, good, too ! " 
 
 Hands clasped and heads down against 
 the wind, which was beginning to stir a bit, 
 they started slowly forward. Then, as the 
 music quickened and the swing gathered 
 strength, the girls went faster and faster till 
 the line swooped down on the goal, in a 
 way that made timid skaters scuttle to the 
 sides of the lake up against the fence, 
 where it broke in disorder and laughter. 
 
 " I could skate forever if I only had 
 music ! " cried some one. 
 
 cc Couldn't you ! I can't bear to go in. 
 I feel so waked up I never want to stop." 
 
 " Let's cheer the class ! " cried the leader. 
 
168 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 "What's the matter with Ninety-blank? 
 It's all right! Again !" 
 
 All over the lake voices joined in the 
 cheer, with much noise. 
 
 " They're at it again ! Did you ever 
 know anything like those Freshmen ! " said 
 a Sophomore, unbuckling her skates wrath- 
 fully. " I expect to hear them cheer for 
 themselves in Chapel next. You'd think 
 they invented the lake and the ice and the 
 art of skating." 
 
 "A mighty silly performance, I call it," 
 said the girl addressed as Myra. " I do 
 think Ninety-blank is too fresh to tolerate 
 much longer." She spoke hoarsely, for she 
 had just been cheering with all her strength. 
 
 " You wouldn't dare say that if you 
 weren't Ninety-blank yourself," retorted a 
 fat little seal of a girl. 
 
 " You'd assault me with intent to kill if 
 I weren't, I suppose." 
 
 "Who was that girl we took on our 
 line ? " asked the one who had raced with 
 Myra. 
 
 " I think it was a girl in our class who 
 
The Main Building 
 
 The Observatory 
 
THE CLAN 169 
 
 lives on fourth, near you people. I can tell 
 her by her queer cap," answered the seal. 
 
 The musicians began packing up their in- 
 struments, the fires were burning low, and 
 on the intense stillness of the winter night 
 came the far-away clang of a bell, the signal, 
 in the old days, that in half an hour lights 
 must be out. 
 
 The skaters hung their skates over their 
 shoulders, pulled their coat collars up higher, 
 and climbed the bank to the campus. Some 
 of them still sang, others were talking, and 
 calling back and forth. There was much 
 noise and laughter, for those two are insep- 
 arable from fun when one is twenty. Girls 
 just crossing the road shouted to girls half- 
 way up the campus invitations to come to 
 their rooms for hot chocolate, or rarebit, or 
 Aunt Jemima butter cakes, or some of the ex- 
 traordinary but palatable tinned comestibles 
 bought from the College store. Other people 
 made appointments to go into town in the 
 morning, the beautiful Saturday morning, 
 when the lazy can sleep, and the industrious 
 do special topics, unharried by lectures, to 
 
i yo VASSAR STORIES 
 
 study ethics together, to go swimming in the 
 Gym., to make blue prints, to organize a 
 chapter play contest committee, to do all the 
 things you never have time for except on 
 that blessed holiday. Jokes, chaff, stories 
 of the day's work, immensely interesting or 
 amusing, were going up and down the line. 
 Here and there you caught scraps of quieter 
 conversation. 
 
 "He said my class work was good, but 
 my lab. was so unscientific that " 
 
 " Duruy is just fine on that, it's promised 
 to me the first hour, then you can " 
 
 <c If we can get seats, we're going to hear 
 'Valkyrie/ Up in Paradise, you know, 
 where you only have to pay " 
 
 " I'll play you a game of hockey in the 
 morning for a dinner at Smith's." 
 
 It was one of the times when you realize 
 what a good old place College is and how 
 you love it. Myra and her fellow-skater, 
 Elizabeth Forsythe, walked slowly up, swing- 
 ing hands and listening to the girl ahead, 
 who was reciting gems of her own and other 
 people's manufacture, after the similitude of 
 
THE CLAN 171 
 
 "Johnnie put poison in his mother's tea, 
 She died in dreadful agony. 
 Johnnie's father was awfully vexed, 
 He said, l Really, John, what next ? ' ' 
 
 Elizabeth talked little, ever. She laughed 
 at the verses, but Myra called out briskly, 
 " Cat, you grow feebler-minded every day. 
 You must spend hours hunting those things 
 out and then learning them." 
 
 " I wish you'd stop saying c those things/ 
 Myra, it shows you haven't c the spirit/ ' 
 
 "The spirit of what?" 
 
 " There ! after that it's useless to answer 
 you. Anybody who has the spirit knows 
 what it is." 
 
 " We're going to have chocolate in Eliza- 
 beth's room, Cat, you may come and partake 
 if you'll leave the spirit behind." 
 
 " I can't : it's an inalienable portion of 
 my mind-stuff. I'm going to get neatly 
 wadded with food elsewhere, thank you. 
 Please extend your bid to to-morrow even- 
 ing. I'm not invited out then." 
 
 The two girls entered the " marble pal- 
 ace," passed the elevator, always prompt to 
 
172 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 set a worthy example of early retiring, up 
 to fourth, where they separated. Myra 
 kept on towards the tower. Elizabeth en- 
 tered the corner single. This was a jolly 
 little room. All the useful unornamentals 
 were concealed behind screens. A peace 
 and order, as tranquillizing as it was novel, 
 brooded over each book and pillow. Eliza- 
 beth pinned up the neatest of " Engaged's," 
 changed her skating clothes for a wrapper, 
 and stretched out on the couch with a happy, 
 sleepy sigh. 
 
 Myra walked in without knocking, set out 
 the chafing-dish, and began to make choco- 
 late in a business-like way. 
 
 "We've only ten minutes, Elizabeth," 
 she said, as she stirred and sweetened the 
 beverage. 
 
 "Take c a babe cut' with me to talk. 
 We haven't had a real talk one for weeks. 
 Tomorrow's Saturday." 
 
 " The mail takes no account of Saturday. 
 I'll cut though, a little while." 
 
 Myra served the chocolate, hunting out 
 crackers and potted tongue to go with it. 
 
THE CLAN 173 
 
 They ate in companionable silence, for, al- 
 though the object of the cut was to talk, 
 neither seemed in a hurry to begin. Occa- 
 sionally they smiled at one another a little, 
 because they were such good friends and 
 were so comfortable and happy. 
 
 Neither girl was pretty. Elizabeth's face 
 was too colorless, Myra's too odd. Both 
 were good to look at, however, Myra be- 
 cause of the energy and tonic frankness that 
 shone from her, Elizabeth because of her 
 dignity and air of high breeding. Both, all 
 unknown to themselves, served as banners 
 to the warring parties at strife over the ques- 
 tion, " Is Vassar democratic ? " 
 
 " Look at Elizabeth Forsythe," said the 
 negatives. " Isn't she a regular snob ? She 
 doesn't know the names, even, of half the 
 class, she doesn't speak to three-fourths of 
 it, and she doesn't think any one in it is 
 worthy to talk with her except about a 
 dozen girls who are her intimate friends." 
 
 "Look at Myra Hume," retorted the 
 affirmatives. " Isn't she Elizabeth's best 
 friend, and isn't she a pal of the nicest 
 
i 7 4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 girls of the class ? And doesn't she tutor, 
 and tote the mail, and dust rooms, and mend 
 clothes ? And isn't she as poor as can be, 
 and dressed like a frump ? " 
 
 All of which was true, but proved nothing. 
 Elizabeth cared not at all for money, posi- 
 tion, outside of College or within it, good 
 clothes, or any of the nameless possessions 
 which seem to determine whether a girl is 
 "a swell" or "a nobody/' It is love of 
 those per se that make the true snob, as 
 Thackeray, who stood godfather for the 
 word, understood it. She would have wel- 
 comed to her business and her bosom the 
 clever, ambitious daughter of the little grocer 
 in her own town, who lived in the room 
 below, as royally as she would have the 
 daughter of " a hundred earls," if such a 
 young woman were among Vassar students, 
 if the former were what Elizabeth called, 
 with her indescribable accent, " a lady." 
 The point lay there. One could not be 
 " a lady," argued Elizabeth from a narrow 
 life and an unimaginative nature, unless 
 one had been reared, not only in one's 
 
THE CLAN 175 
 
 own proper person, but in that of one's 
 ancestors, in refinement and among the pol- 
 ishing forces due to wealth. She respected, 
 oh, immensely, the self-made girl "whit- 
 tled into shape with her own jack-knife " ; 
 but, as a friend, she would have none of her. 
 She had only a few friends, as the girls said : 
 she was content to have it so. She opened 
 her eyes in amazement often when she heard 
 some acquaintance say, " Oh, yes, So-and-so 
 is rather coarse-grained, but she's no end of 
 fun and a thoroughly clever girl." How 
 could they find any pleasure in such people ? 
 If some of her own comrades were insipid 
 or dull, as they undoubtedly were, at least 
 every one was " a lady." 
 
 Elizabeth's intimacy with Myra had not 
 made any more of a " cosmopolite " of her. 
 Myra was " a lady," by birth and training. 
 Her poverty and her consequent frumpiness 
 were the fortunes of war. 
 
 Myra's own place in " society " as Vas- 
 sar knows it was due to powers quite out- 
 side of herself, she had "a pull." Her 
 two sisters, one graduated six years before, 
 
1 76 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the other only two years, had been marked 
 figures in their day. They had been neither 
 poor nor frumpy, but resplendent, lavish, 
 brilliant girls, born to lead anywhere. One 
 had been president of her class, the other of 
 Students' Association, and, what does not fol- 
 low as a matter of course, foremost in the social 
 life. They were still spoken of with admi- 
 ration by even those classes which knew them 
 not, personally. When Myra entered, she 
 found Seniors and Juniors glad to know her 
 for the sake of her popular, powerful sisters. 
 And, if the Seniors and Juniors take a girl 
 up, her own class are sure to. 
 
 The money had all departed from the 
 Hume family, after the sudden American 
 fashion. Myra was a shabby girl who 
 tutored, worked in the library, distributed 
 the mail, executed commissions in town, 
 copied essays, sewed on dress braids, washed 
 hair, darned stockings, cleaned bicycles, and 
 did twenty other offices for the students to 
 pay her College expenses. But was she 
 not Annette and Margaret Hume's sister? 
 Every girl left in College who had belonged 
 
THE CLAN 177 
 
 in the charmed circle of which Margaret 
 Hume had been the centre rallied around 
 Myra immediately to show to outsiders that 
 once " a swell " always " a swell." They 
 acknowledged no falling from grace. 
 
 Elizabeth's sister and Myra's sister had 
 been friends, therefore Elizabeth at once 
 sought out Myra. To her the fact that 
 Myra was working her way through College 
 proved her favorite theory, that " a lady " can 
 never lose caste, no matter what she does. 
 
 Doubtless Myra, endowed with many of 
 her sister's gifts, would have risen to offices 
 and honors in College. Nowhere is the 
 saying truer than at Vassar, that water finds 
 its own level. But that she should be in 
 the heart of all things gay and entertaining 
 in her Freshman year was more than un- 
 likely. 
 
 " Myra," said Elizabeth, setting down 
 her cup, cc what is that girl's name, the 
 one on the ice ? " 
 
 " Which one ? " 
 
 " The girl Neil took in on our line just 
 before we came up." 
 
178 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " That lives around by me, you mean, 
 Lydia Agnes Waitely. I know not only 
 everybody's front and last name, but their 
 middle ones besides." 
 
 " She must be an odd girl." 
 
 " Why ? " idly. 
 
 " She skated all the evening alone. I 
 saw her doing it all this afternoon, and yes- 
 terday, too. I've noticed her lately. She's 
 always by herself. I think a girl who never 
 wants any one with her has a singular 
 nature." 
 
 " Maybe she does want some one, but 
 can't have them. This is an unfriendly 
 place to some people." 
 
 " Unfriendly ! Listen to that." 
 
 " That " was the population of fourth play- 
 ing about the corridor before going to bed, 
 and making as much noise as a lot of 
 school-boys. Half the Freshman Class 
 seemed to be calling, " Good-night, old 
 Mary," " Good-night, honey," " Thank you 
 for your buns," " Had a grand time at your 
 ball," and other farewells. An all-embrac- 
 ing camaraderie and good-fellowship rilled the 
 
THE CLAN 179 
 
 corridor and overflowed to fifth centre and 
 third. Certainly, all the class to-night 
 agreed with the old lady of the nursery 
 rhyme, who thought this world " a dear, 
 sweet place." It was the fortnight following 
 the Mid-years, and that is always a jolly 
 season. If you have escaped the wreck and 
 ruin of that time of tribulation, even though 
 it be so as by fire, your heart is full of a 
 gratitude so profound as to be in itself a 
 joy. The new semester with its alluring 
 promise of opportunities for you to do the 
 great things you failed to in the past is still 
 so young that your illusions are untarnished. 
 If you flunked at the exam., at least you 
 know the worst, the blow has fallen, and 
 you still are on the earth : you are taking 
 a good breath before tutoring for the re., 
 some time in April. 
 
 "Yes, our own crowd burbling together. 
 But Miss Waitely isn't there, nor Miss 
 Oberley, nor half the class." 
 
 " But they are with their own friends some- 
 where." 
 
 " I tell you I don't believe Miss Waitely 
 
i8o VASSAR STORIES 
 
 has any friends. She doesn't go with us ; 
 and who but us lives up here ? " 
 
 " Probably her friends live some place 
 else." 
 
 "They're not the Giffords, Alice Put- 
 nam, and Florence Hillis and those girls, 
 I know. She looks too nice to be friends 
 with the Hillyer and the Monly and the 
 rest of the Objectionables." 
 
 " But there are several nice, quiet sort of 
 girls that she could become acquainted with. 
 That girl with the lovely reddish hair and 
 that other little one that limps and that one 
 always with her. I don't know who they 
 are, but they look as if they would be 
 congenial to her." 
 
 " One of those lives in a cottage and the 
 others at Strong. Besides, I don't suppose 
 you ever noticed that it is hard to get to 
 know any one here. You can't go up to a 
 girl, and say, c Helloa, I'm quiet, and you 
 look so, too. Let's be friends.' Acquaint- 
 ance has to come about naturally." 
 
 " I knew every one of our girls in a week." 
 
 " Of course you did. You and I had 
 
THE CLAN 181 
 
 met before we came. Sally Dean was your 
 school friend, Barbara Sterling's sister and 
 yours were pals. Lois Duncan is Bab's 
 cousin, Arna Kellar rooms with Bab. 
 Margaret Uhler went to school with Lois, 
 Emily and Nan room with Lois. Betty's 
 sister is a Senior : when she was a Freshman, 
 she was Margaret's sister's best friend. It's 
 a regular House that Jack Built. How do 
 you think it would be if you hadn't known 
 a soul when you entered ? " 
 
 " 1 still believe that unless a girl is very 
 strange she'll have some friends by the end 
 of six months." 
 
 " Elizabeth, you vex me. You're so nar- 
 row about such lots of things." 
 
 Elizabeth laughed serenely. 
 
 " Going to join the Sunday night supper 
 club Bert Alden is getting up ? " she said 
 by way of changing the conversation. 
 
 " Can't. Costs too much. I prefer, my- 
 self, our suppers a deux, where you pay and 
 I do the work. But I don't want to hinder 
 you from joining." 
 
 In the discussion of the new club the un- 
 known Freshman was forgotten. 
 
1 82 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 About a week after this Bonfire Night 
 Lydia Agnes Waitely lay on the couch in 
 the "pest-house," waiting for Lizzie, the 
 little nurse, to bring up her dinner. She 
 was not really ill, just German measles, and, 
 therefore, dinner was something to look for- 
 ward to. Moreover, Lizzie was a human 
 being, the only one besides Mrs. Flett and 
 the doctors that Lydia saw all through the 
 long day. It was dark in the room and 
 rather warm. Lydia rose and opened the 
 window. She stood looking out towards 
 Music Hall, now alight, from which came 
 the muffled click, click of pianos. A party 
 of girls were coming home from Sunset 
 Hill. One of them evidently went in to 
 Music Hall, for Lydia heard the others call 
 out goodbye. 
 
 " Oh, girls," suddenly cried the Music 
 Hall person, Lydia could hear what she 
 said perfectly, " did you know there's a 
 girl here sick with small-pox ? " 
 
 " Nonsense ! It's only another newspaper 
 scare," answered one of the others, Barbara 
 Sterling. Lydia knew the voice. 
 
THE CLAN 183 
 
 " No, sir, it's small-pox. She's in the 
 pest-house." 
 
 " That's all you know," said a third girl, 
 Myra Hume. cc It's roseola, what Amy 
 West had Thanksgiving time." 
 
 " Who is it, anyhow ? " asked somebody. 
 
 cc That girl in our class lives next to you. 
 I don't know her name," answered she of 
 the small-pox alarm. 
 
 " Oh," said some one. No one asked 
 any more questions. Apparently, the sub- 
 ject had no further interest for them. 
 
 Lydia closed the window, laughing. The 
 word " small-pox " would spread like a fire. 
 In a week Prexy, the doctors, and Mrs. 
 Kendrick would be harassed by unnumbered 
 letters and despatches from alarmed parents. 
 All because she, Lydia Waitely, had the 
 smallest of German measles. 
 
 Then she remembered the answer, " That 
 girl in our class, I don't know her name," 
 and the indifferent "Oh." She stopped 
 laughing, and pushed her face into the pil- 
 lows. They were wet in a moment with 
 tears as bitter as perhaps a girl ever shed. 
 
1 84 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Why don't they know my name ! They 
 don't care to know it ! and this is February ! " 
 
 Many a girl is homesick at college, and 
 yearns for that friendly place where interest 
 in her is a matter of course and she need do 
 nothing but be to gain love. The unhappi- 
 ness of such ones is nothing compared to 
 that of the girl who wants friends and can- 
 not make them. 
 
 Lydia was that sort of a girl. She came 
 from a small place with few young people 
 in it. Those few were quiet, mild-natured 
 girls who studied, performed the various 
 duties of their lives, and played in a sober, 
 pleasant way. Lydia knew as little about 
 fun as she did about sadness. She came to 
 College because she had been the bright 
 pupil at her school and the principal had 
 persuaded her parents that it would be for 
 her happiness and her well-being to take her 
 brightness to a larger field. Lydia expected 
 to work hard, learn a great deal, and bear 
 away some honors, as she had done at school. 
 She had never met a College girl. She did 
 not dream of that life of College, wholly 
 
THE CLAN 185 
 
 outside of books and more potent in its 
 influence than any of them. Perhaps, if she 
 had talked with a graduate, she would not 
 have understood any better. The thing is 
 so difficult to describe. 
 
 By the time she had been at College a 
 month, she had discovered that there were 
 girls in the world utterly unlike any she had 
 hitherto known. They amazed her, those 
 gay, jolly, happy-go-lucky beings who 
 laughed and joked and played through the 
 livelong day. They fascinated her. They 
 made her miserable. All about her was 
 what she called, after the title of one of her 
 favorite magazine stories, " fulness of life." 
 Yet she was as much apart from it as if she 
 were still in her dull New England home. 
 A clan, loyal to itself, sufficient to itself, yet 
 admired by the " Uitlanders," the leader of 
 all the good times, of all the "society," 
 lived about her. She was an alien, whose 
 very name it knew not. 
 
 If Lydia had roomed at Strong, where 
 there was a handful of studious, serious 
 girls like herself, she might have been 
 
1 86 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 happy at once. If she had roomed in first 
 south, the noisy, lively set which ruled that 
 corridor would have extended to her its 
 friendship, simply because she was a Fresh- 
 man and within its precinct. 
 
 Chance put Lydia down on fourth, the 
 floor on which lived Elizabeth Forsythe, 
 Myra Hume, and the rest of the class 
 chiefs. They were all connected with one 
 another in the endless chain Myra had de- 
 scribed. They drew the cord close about 
 the clan and looked keenly before they 
 loosened it to admit a stranger, however at- 
 tractive. They could not be expected to 
 take in Lydia, a shy girl, with no single 
 quality of mind, body, or estate, to set her 
 aside from twenty other Freshmen they did 
 not know. They did not snub her. She 
 would have been glad if they had. They 
 just were not aware she existed. She had 
 lived in a single in that Chinese puzzle 
 made up of nests of little rooms by the 
 North Tower now for six months. She 
 was as lonely as the day she entered. 
 
 She might have rubbed up acquaintance- 
 
THE CLAN 187 
 
 ship with the girl who sat next to her at the 
 table, or with the two who had essay interviews 
 and Gyms, the same time she did. These 
 had friends, too, who would become hers. 
 But they were all just like the girls home, 
 just like Lydia herself. She longed to be a 
 part of that different, delightful world 
 opened before her. She longed for " ful- 
 ness of life." 
 
 They made such jokes about their work, 
 these girls, they took it so lightly, so humor- 
 ously, yet some of them were both deeper 
 and more original than she, and one was 
 openly pointed out as the cleverest girl in 
 the class. They were taking the very heart 
 out' of College, while she 
 
 Once she had known what it was to be 
 like them, to be them. That night on the 
 ice she had held their hands hard, had skated 
 and sung, and laughed with them. It was 
 over so soon ! And the walk up to College 
 alone, behind the united clan, had seemed so 
 much lonelier than usual in contrast. 
 
 The doctors pitied Lydia' s solitary days 
 in the " pest-house," where she had been 
 
1 88 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 since the morning after the Bonfire. They 
 brought her books, and told her stories and 
 bits of College news to cheer her up. In 
 reality, Lydia was less forlorn than when in 
 her own room : she " played " here that the 
 whole class would come pouring in on her, 
 did not the quarantine forbid. 
 
 But, however much you may pretend in 
 the daylight, when night comes you feel, like 
 Alice, that it is hard work to pretend alone 
 in the dark. Lydia's mind went whirling 
 through the nights when she sat by herself 
 studying, hearing all about her the voices 
 and laughter of girls running back and forth 
 between rooms ; the afternoons when she 
 walked about the campus alone, meeting 
 parties of jolly friends, who turned out for 
 her as they would for a tree ; the Saturdays 
 when she read by herself, watching from her 
 window troops starting out to wheel or 
 drive ; about the whole of her lonesome, 
 hungry year. 
 
 She was glad to hear Lizzie's step on the 
 stair. No Lizzie entered, however. The 
 new-comer was Mrs. Flett, and a girl, an- 
 
THE CLAN 189 
 
 other measles victim, evidently. Lydia's 
 heart gave a sudden jerk at the possibilities 
 flashing through it, for the girl was Eliza- 
 beth Forsythe, chief of the clan. 
 
 Eight long days, of twenty-four long 
 hours each, went over the heads of the 
 measles patients before they were allowed 
 to join their fellows once more. 
 
 The " pest-house " is a better place to 
 grow acquainted than a desert island. 
 There are possibilities of solitary walks on 
 the latter : in the former, escape from your 
 sister-sufferer is as impossible as from your 
 room-mate in a Main double. Had Eliza- 
 beth been twice as fastidious as she was, and 
 Lydia only one-half as likable, they needs 
 must have fraternized, in the endless after- 
 noons, when all books are taken away by the 
 inexorable Mrs. Flett, and you are told to 
 " rest without talking." It is difficult to get 
 around that order in the Infirmary proper, 
 where a watchful nurse keeps guard in the 
 next room, and where even a whisper seems 
 to carry miles. But in the " pest-house " 
 vigilance is relaxed, and much may be done 
 
1 9 o VASSAR STORIES 
 
 in the way of personal adventures : tales of 
 what my father said and my sister did ; 
 comparisons of ideas on College ; and, after 
 a suitable time,- like Punch's "pretty little 
 dears," the tragedy of one another's lives. 
 
 If Lydia made round eyes over Elizabeth, 
 Elizabeth opened hers equally over Lydia. 
 Here was a girl who had never travelled, 
 never been part of any sort of social life, 
 never known any cultivated, interesting peo- 
 ple, who had never owned a visiting card, 
 never heard of a golf tea nor a Paris hat nor 
 a theatre party, to whom most of Elizabeth's 
 daily life at home was as foreign as that in 
 Manila, who was yet gentle-mannered, re- 
 fined, "a lady." It was very instructive to 
 Elizabeth. She asked Lydia, as directly as 
 she thought in accordance with good breed- 
 ing, if there were any more in the world like 
 her. She played with her as a child might 
 with a toy of new and unsuspected mechanism. 
 
 Even in the confidences of the twilight be- 
 fore dinner came up, or the last talks as they 
 lay in bed, Lydia never mentioned her lonely, 
 friendless year. Elizabeth understood, how- 
 
THE CLAN 191 
 
 ever, the little jerks in stories, the eloquent 
 silences that meant "here others speak of 
 their friends, I have none." 
 
 " I wish Myra could see me," she thought 
 one night. "I am being broadened by the 
 minute. It's like what they say of College 
 Settlements, the chief good is to the settlers. 
 If Barbara Sterling, and Lois, and Bert 
 could know a girl like Lydia, it would just 
 stretch their horizon line till it would have to 
 give. They shall know her ; she'll be as 
 educative as English A." Then the sight of 
 Lydia's face, which seemed to her sharpened 
 eyes to have a wistfulness in it, " They shall 
 know her because she is a dear girl who is just 
 pining for fun and a lot of burblers, she's 
 nice enough to be any one's friend. The 
 girls just must be friendly and jolly to her." 
 
 Elizabeth went first. Poor Lydia trem- 
 bled and quivered all day, thinking of her 
 goodbye. 
 
 " We'll have a party at my house to cele- 
 brate our discharge." 
 
 Would she do it ? Would she invite the 
 alien, the stranger to it ? 
 
1 92 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Be careful you don't get cold, and come 
 back if you feel badly," said the nurse at the 
 Infirmary door. 
 
 Lydia was free. She walked down the 
 corridor towards her own house. Chapel 
 was just over. The girls were flooding the 
 stairs, talking in a way that would have told 
 a Vassarite, even if their pretty light gowns 
 had not, that it was Saturday night. Lydia, 
 dressed in a sensible, hideous gray wrapper, 
 shrank against the wall. There it went, 
 the clan, Bert, Lois, Betty, Arna, Neil, 
 arms on one another's shoulders, laugh- 
 ing, playing, joking in that maddeningly 
 self-sufficient way it always had. She felt, 
 as a hundred times before, that she must 
 thrust herself violently in among them, 
 crying, " You shall know I am a human 
 being." 
 
 She opened her door. The gas was 
 lighted, and a bowl of violets stood in the 
 centre of the table. Elizabeth was kneeling 
 at the desk, writing a note. She took 
 Lydia's hand, and held it between both hers. 
 
 " The ball is over at my house. I was 
 
THE CLAN 193 
 
 just writing your invitation, for fear you 
 wouldn't see it on your block. Come on." 
 
 cc Oh, I can't this way/' looking from her 
 wrapper to Elizabeth's evening dress. One 
 never associated shops with Elizabeth's 
 gowns, or so much a yard. They were as if 
 formed mysteriously for her in ways wholly 
 pleasant to the beholder. 
 
 "All the more fun. You're just out of 
 the Infirmary." 
 
 Not that, but the thought that it was more 
 as if she were really of the clan to go so, 
 decided Lydia. 
 
 It was a very lively, gay " ball," as 
 crowded as most balls are, as sixteen girls 
 were seated in a room rather a tight fit for 
 one, and with far more to eat than the usual 
 reveller finds. Lydia said little, ate next to v 
 nothing, and laughed constantly, as often 
 with astonishment as with amusement. 
 They were so unlike any one she had ever 
 met, these girls who were so alarmingly 
 frank with one another, so whimsical, so 
 full of alluring freaks and fancies. For all 
 their camaraderie she felt out of it all, like 
 
i 9 4 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 some guest of Elizabeth's who could not be 
 expected to enter into the fun thoroughly. 
 
 Elizabeth stood Lydia's unwearied friend, 
 and Elizabeth was a great lady in the clan. 
 Therefore it was friends with Lydia. She 
 was not lonely now. She drifted in and out 
 of girls' rooms ; lay on their couches, eating 
 fudges and listening to their stories ; sat on 
 the window-ledges, between classes, discuss- 
 ing all the mighty issues of College; was 
 hail-fellow-well-met with them all. Some- 
 times Lydia was so happy she would laugh 
 aloud and whisper to herself, " This is ful- 
 ness of life." 
 
 But there were other times when she had 
 that old subtle feeling of the first night's 
 " ball," that she was not really one of them ; 
 * that she would always be just on the verge 
 of the real intimate life of these girls. This 
 feeling took shape in her mind as a necessity 
 to be gayer, more ready for fun, more will- 
 ing to stop work for any pretext than the 
 others. Barbara, Margaret, Bert, might be 
 cross or low-spirited or hidden behind "En- 
 gaged " : she could not be. Her place was 
 
THE CLAN 195 
 
 not the impregnable one theirs was. The 
 girls must not think her stupid or a grind. 
 It would take so little to lose the hold she 
 had on that gay little world. She was a 
 guest there, liked and enjoyed, but not one 
 of the true household : she must be compli- 
 ant, like a guest. 
 
 This cost a good deal of time, and Lydia's 
 work suffered. It cost money, besides ; for 
 most of the girls were rich, and spent money 
 in ways that seemed to Lydia's frugal New 
 England habit of mind little less than un- 
 bridled prodigality. Those who could not 
 afford the spreads in their rooms, the din- 
 ners at Smith's, the trips to New York, the 
 drives about the country, the constant 
 spending of money, said with cheerful frank- 
 ness, " I am poor. I cannot do that, or go 
 there." Either they remained at home, 
 without losing any one's liking, or some 
 Maecenas in the clan "paid the freight." 
 Lydia had not the courage to do like them. 
 She had been brought up by people who 
 would have been ashamed to give lack of 
 money as a reason for not doing a thing, 
 
196 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 even though it were the correct one. She 
 felt, too, that here again she could not be 
 as one of them. They would take it amiss 
 if she refused to join the fun because of its 
 extravagance. 
 
 If the old saying about a friend at court 
 be true, it surely applies to one's success 
 outside the court as much as that within. 
 When "the swells" became friends to 
 Lydia, the girls in all the sets of the class 
 discovered how desirable an acquaintance 
 she was. That does not say that they 
 were mean-spirited, but that they lacked 
 independence, or in many cases had really 
 never heard of her. Lydia was at her best 
 with the ones whose manners and customs 
 were more akin to her own than were those 
 of the girls she admired so greatly. They 
 admired her, too, for underneath her shyness 
 she had a good amount of force, and her 
 mind was developing into a rather remark- 
 able one. 
 
 " Lydia," said a girl putting her head in 
 the door one day, " want to walk with me ? 
 I'd like to have a business discussion with 
 you." 
 
THE CLAN 197 
 
 " Come in after Chapel, Jean. I've been 
 making up Gym. cuts till I'm that tired I 
 couldn't creep down to first if I was paid." 
 
 After Chapel Jean came around to the 
 room, bringing Eleanor Fonce with her, or 
 rather the latter brought the former, for 
 Jean was a mild soul who enjoyed being led, 
 and Eleanor was a little shrew of a girl, never 
 happy unless stirring up somebody or some- 
 thing. 
 
 " Now, Lydia Waitely, what do you think 
 about this committee deal at the last class 
 meeting ? " began Eleanor, seating herself 
 with a snap and fixing her bright eyes on 
 Lydia. 
 
 " Um, well, it was a deal sure enough, 
 but don't you think it was. involuntary ? " 
 cautiously. 
 
 " Involuntary ! " with contempt. " Every 
 time I nominated one of our girls, Elsie 
 Gifford would nominate another of us, then 
 Florence Hillis would nominate one of their 
 set. Of course our votes were split between 
 our two girls, and so their candidate was 
 elected every time. I'm good enough friends 
 
198 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 with Elsie and Florence and that lot, though 
 we don't trot in the same class exactly, but 
 I hate this way they have of trying to run 
 the class, as if because they wanted a thing 
 so, that was the only way it could be done." 
 
 " I don't think they try to manage things 
 and keep all the offices to themselves any 
 more than Elizabeth Forsythe's set. They 
 act er they're awfully nice girls, every 
 one knows that, but you don't like to have 
 the nicest girls act so well ordery, do 
 you ? " Jean's voice, bold at the start, 
 tailed off miserably. Lydia thrilled with 
 happiness. Jean had remembered her hos- 
 tess's alliance with the Forsythe set. 
 
 " Now, I tell you what those GifFords and 
 Putnams and that ilk are about. They're 
 pretty sure we will put up a girl for class 
 president, then they'll put up another of us, 
 and then they'll put up one of themselves. 
 Our votes will divide, of course, just as they 
 did last night, theirs won't. Besides, they'll 
 have all the votes of your friends, Lydia, for 
 they'll never vote for us. They think we're 
 grinds and pokes and that sort of thing." 
 
THE CLAN 199 
 
 Eleanor's face grew redder and redder as 
 she talked, her voice had an angry twang. 
 
 " But, Eleanor, maybe those girls will put 
 up Sally Dean or Bert Alden. Then we'll 
 have as good a chance as any faction," said 
 Jean. 
 
 " No, we won't. Because our girls are so 
 weak-spirited they either don't vote at all, 
 or so senseless they vote for their friends 
 instead of uniting on one girl to beat the 
 machine." 
 
 "Machine!" laughed Lydia. "What's 
 your party but a machine, too ? " 
 
 "We're an organization," hotly. "We 
 don't care whether our girl or somebody 
 else's girl gets the place as long as it's the 
 best girl. But we're not willing to admit 
 that a girl from one of those two sets is the 
 best girl just because she comes from them. 
 See ? " 
 
 " Are you speaking editorially, Eleanor ? " 
 asked Lydia. 
 
 "You know as well as I do that two- 
 thirds of the class are outside of those two 
 sets, the swell one and the lively one, if you 
 
200 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 want to have a name for them. Do you, 
 Lydia Waitely, honestly think it's fair for 
 the minority to shut out the majority, when 
 that is just as clever and capable, only not 
 so pushing. Do you ? " 
 
 " No, I don't, Eleanor ! I'll do what I 
 can against it. What's your plan ? " 
 
 " This. You run for president." 
 
 " Me ? " with more amazement than ele- 
 gance. 
 
 " Yes, you. All our girls like and respect 
 you, so you're sure of our votes. Then 
 Elizabeth Forsythe will vote for you ; and, 
 if she does, Myra Hume will of course, and 
 Bert Alden. If Bert does, Betty Blake will, 
 and, oh ! all the others in that camp about. 
 You can defeat any Gifford candidate ever 
 made ; and, even if the Giffords and the 
 Forsythes do join against you, I think 
 there's enough of us to elect you." 
 
 Lydia stared at her visitors helplessly. 
 Was it just a year ago this very month that 
 she had cried herself to sleep in the Infirm- 
 ary, a friendless Freshman ? 
 
 Jean and Eleanor stayed an hour talking 
 
THE CLAN 201 
 
 elections in general, Lydia's own in particu- 
 lar. When they left, she was aroused with 
 a righteous heat against all wire-pullers save 
 those who pull for a noble end. This was 
 strengthened by a remark she overheard on 
 the corridor below, where she had gone to 
 borrow a book, having decided to study a 
 bit now the serious business of the evening 
 was over. The speaker was Elsie GiiFord. 
 She was laughing exultantly with another 
 girl as they drank at the "fountain of learn- 
 ing," otherwise the water-cooler. 
 
 " Smooth wasn't the word for it ! Every 
 time Eleanor Fonce nominated one of her 
 friends, I nominated another and split the 
 party like a knife." 
 
 Elsie had been mean purposely ! Lydia 
 was determined to win if she could. She 
 hated that spirit of crowding out really fine 
 girls from all positions simply because they 
 were not of a certain social order. 
 
 For a week Eleanor, her henchman Jean, 
 and another fiery agitator, Mary Veach, 
 electioneered for Lydia. The girls of their 
 camp were enthusiastic for her, they re- 
 
202 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ported. Some of those who did not know 
 her even came to her to tell her they should 
 vote for her because they thought she stood 
 for no one party, but for all. Lydia hardly 
 slept or ate, she was so excited. Surely, 
 this was " fulness of life." 
 
 " Girls/' it was an excited Sophomore 
 who burst into Elizabeth Forsythe's room 
 one morning, " do you know what's going 
 to happen at the election ? " 
 
 Elizabeth, Myra, Lydia, and Bert Alden 
 were coaching one another up in Sophomore 
 Argumentation for a next hour recitation. 
 They dropped the " Case of Evans " imme- 
 diately, however, to consider the far more 
 important case of the next class president. 
 
 " Miss Fonce and her friends are going to 
 nominate some one of themselves and elect 
 her, too, Elsie Gifford told me. She hasn't 
 found out who it is yet; but she says the 
 girl will win, whoever she is, because all 
 those queer, drab girls nobody knows are 
 sure to vote for her. Think of having 
 Miss Hillyer or the delightful Evelina 
 Larned for president and representative of 
 our class ! " 
 
THE CLAN 203 
 
 " They won't put up any one like that, 
 you foolish party," said Myra. "It will 
 probably be Leslie Owen or Miss Pelton." 
 
 " There isn't a girl among them really fit 
 for president," scolded the bearer of evil 
 tidings. 
 
 " Whom do you want? " asked Lydia, with 
 an effort. She had meant to say " we." 
 The other came out of itself. 
 
 " Why, Emily Fullham, of course. She's 
 bright, chock full of business, and popular 
 with every one. And isn't she a stunner to 
 look at ! She's done heaps for the class. 
 Those other girls want her, too. They say, 
 if we'll vote for May Giffbrd for Miscellany 
 editor, they'll vote for Em for president." 
 
 Straightway all tongues fell a-wagging till 
 the bell announced that the " Case of 
 Evans " must at last get a hearing. 
 
 Lydia sat in the class, with her eyes riveted 
 on the A's, B's, and C's with which the 
 professor was marking on the board as with 
 mile-stones the progress of the famous 
 Burke's speech. But what point in Mr. 
 Evans's career seemed best denoted by A 
 
204 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 and what by B she could never tell, for she 
 was trying the case of Lydia Waitely against 
 Emily Fullham. 
 
 She did not like Emily, but the class 
 adored her. Emily was one of its charter 
 members, so to speak. In an issue between 
 them the girl known and loved from the 
 beginning of Freshman year would have all 
 the advantage over one brought in towards 
 the close. Then, too, if she were nominated 
 by Eleanor Fonce, she would stand out at 
 once as a candidate from another party, the 
 cc Uitlanders." The girls would be enraged 
 at her. Some of them might drop her as a 
 traitor. Elizabeth cared more for Emily 
 than for her ; and Elizabeth was dear to 
 Lydia, not only as her patron, but as the 
 strongest and sweetest girl she had ever 
 known. 
 
 Yet she had consented to be the candidate 
 for the Uitlanders, had made small campaign 
 speeches in girls' rooms. Moreover, she 
 really felt that the right lay with them. 
 The clan and the Giffords (the party tak- 
 ing its name from the two sisters who were 
 
THE CLAN 205 
 
 its leaders) did try to manage the class for 
 its own interest and did trample down the 
 mild, unassertive grinds. There was pleas- 
 ure in the thought, too, much pleasure, in 
 being president. Outsiders would never 
 know how she came to be elected. For 
 them she would shine as elected because she 
 was tremendously popular. Yet Lydia, like 
 a wise girl, knew that it is only your place 
 in the class that counts, after all. 
 
 Her duty ? her desire ? Lydia had been 
 taught to decide all questions by the first; 
 but then she had never before experienced 
 "fulness of life." 
 
 The rank and file of the Uitlanders were 
 angry and surprised, the leaders were furious 
 and amazed, when Lydia took them her re- 
 fusal to run for president. It was a gloomy 
 conference. Lydia went from it to an exam. 
 the Mid-years had just begun with the 
 feeling that she was a criminal and a blun- 
 derer. 
 
 " Lydia ! " " Lyddy ! " " Oh, Lydia, you 
 nice old bun ! " " Come in, Lydia, and cele- 
 brate ! " clamored all sorts of voices, as she 
 passed a room on her way from Chapel. 
 
206 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " We've heard about you," cried Sally 
 Dean, hugging as far up as she could reach, 
 " how the Fonce and the Veach wanted 
 you to run for president, but how you 
 wouldn't because you wanted little Em'ly, 
 just like the rest of us." 
 
 " We heard ! We heard ! " came the cho- 
 rus. Every girl present seized some portion 
 of Lydia, and hugged it or shook it or 
 pounded it. She was hustled on to the 
 couch, fed with candy, and made to listen 
 to every one's opinion of the coming elec- 
 tion as one whose appreciation was worth 
 having. 
 
 Lydia looked about the room filled with 
 all the girls with whom a year ago she had 
 so longed to be friends. They were seated 
 at her feet, beside her, on her. She thought 
 of the influence and position she had given 
 up. She remembered a sentence from Mary 
 Wilkins's "A New England Nun." She 
 whispered to herself, with a queer smile, 
 " She had sold her birthright for a mess 
 of pottage, but, then, the pottage was so 
 sweet." 
 
THE CLAN 207 
 
 What was left of the week Lydia conse- 
 crated to exams. The excitement of the 
 coming election had crowded those usually 
 mighty events into the background. She 
 had played all the year. She now set about 
 doing the work of three months in three 
 days. As this is never accomplished success- 
 fully, except by geniuses, and college boys 
 in their own accounts of themselves, Lydia 
 trembled for the outcome. 
 
 Saturday night she came up from a day in 
 New York. She had " bunted " joyously 
 with some chosen spirits and had been roy- 
 ally happy till she began to ask herself, as 
 the train reached about Newburg, " Where 
 has all my money gone ? " By that system 
 of mental accounts made up of " seventy-five 
 cents for my new tie," " ten to the porter," 
 "five, and five, and five for car-fare," she 
 discovered the path by which each dollar had 
 slipped away. But to that other sadder 
 question, cc Why, oh, why, did I spend so 
 much ? " she could find no answer. 
 
 On her couch lay a pile of letters, from 
 home, from College, in the treasurer's hand, 
 
208 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 and ah ! three others also unstamped. The 
 treasurer's letter contained no news, only an 
 unpleasant reminder, in the form of an 
 itemized statement, of her debt to Vassar, 
 composed of an Infirmary bill, and money 
 borrowed, the amount in all of a hundred 
 dollars. Lydia had never owed twenty cents 
 till she came to College. Moreover, the 
 pressure of a debt depends not on its own 
 weight, but on the strength of the purse 
 which sustains it. Lydia's was feeble. 
 
 The first little envelope enclosed the card 
 of one of the English professors, on which 
 was written : 
 
 " Miss Waitely will please present herself 
 for re-examination in English B, April 17." 
 
 The second had a printed form : 
 
 " I regret to state that Miss Waitely's 
 [her name filled in] work in Physics is de- 
 ficient," signed by the professor. 
 
 The third was a letter covering three 
 pages, in which " my dear girl " and " my 
 young friend " was informed of the how, 
 why, and how much she had failed in Greek, 
 and urged to devote herself earnestly to the 
 
THE CLAN 209 
 
 task of making up the work, thus learning 
 Greek and cultivating character at the same 
 time. 
 
 " Shall I tack these up on the wall the 
 way Mary Wilkes did ? " she said aloud 
 with a forlorn smile. 
 
 Her mother's letter had no comfort. 
 Business was bad, her father's illness had 
 been expensive : would she be unhappy if she 
 had a much smaller allowance the rest of the 
 year and no new clothes ? Everything would 
 be brighter in the fall. 
 
 " Flunked three studies ! Owe a hundred 
 dollars ! No money coming ! It's hideous ! " 
 Then, as laughter and voices sounded down 
 the corridor, "I don't care ! It was worth 
 it ! " 
 
 Then she went to bed, and, being not yet 
 twenty-one, immediately to sleep. 
 
 Lydia told no one her troubles, for she had 
 the New England power " to burn her own 
 smoke." She faced the situation pluckily. 
 Through her own choice, conscious if not 
 deliberate, she was three subjects behind the 
 class and in debt. She must make up the 
 
210 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 subjects ; she must earn the hundred dol- 
 lars. No more fun with any one. Hence- 
 forth she would be numbered among the 
 grinds, the shabby, over-worked, worried 
 ones ; for there are degrees even in the 
 state of grinds. How would the clan act to 
 her now ? That troubled Lydia more than 
 how she could raise a hundred dollars. 
 
 Spring the coaxing, alluring spring 
 had come. Other people played about in 
 the beautiful outdoors and were happy after 
 their several kinds. Lydia toiled and moiled, 
 shut up in her little room behind a huge 
 " Engaged." She began to work every day 
 at six ; she worked between breakfast and 
 first recitation, between fourth hour and 
 luncheon, between dinner and Chapel. This 
 last was the hardest of all; for she could 
 hear the girls as they strolled by arm in arm 
 under her window, and see them as they 
 played games out on the campus. She 
 worked all Sunday and all Saturday. She 
 began to be haggard, and her clothes had 
 the appearance of having been put on with 
 one hand while she took notes on some- 
 
THE CLAN 211 
 
 thing with the other. When she went to 
 walk, she analyzed subjects for argumenta- 
 tion or recited physics' formulae. By June 
 she was only half an inch from brain fever. 
 But she had made the class again, and had 
 lessened her debt two-thirds. 
 
 "Will you please tell us," Betty Blake 
 had said, seizing upon Lydia one day early 
 in March, " why youVe turned from an at- 
 tractive young Personality into a dun-col- 
 ored Intellectualness ? " 
 
 " I'm studying Greek. I want to know 
 more about it." 
 
 "Well," quoted Betty, " c I am sorry in- 
 deed that I have no Greek ; but I should 
 be sorrier still if I were dead/ That's what 
 you'll be if you keep on a-grindin'-of at 
 such a fierce rate." 
 
 " Lydia Waitely," said Barbara Sterling, 
 " none of us see you any more, ever. Why 
 do you shut yourself up so ? " 
 
 " Lyddy ! " cried Emily Fullham. Lydia 
 hated to be nicknamed. "You must be 
 dead set on an honor, or you'd never work 
 so like a little dog." 
 
212 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Come play, honey/' coaxed another. 
 
 " No time." 
 
 " Time was made for slaves." 
 
 " I am a slave." 
 
 Even Elizabeth Forsythe, who usually 
 thought other people as capable of man- 
 aging their own affairs as she could be for 
 them, wrote on Lydia's block, " Nothing 
 more moves a wise man's pity than the 
 case of one who is in too much hurry to 
 be learned." 
 
 After a bit the clan ceased to trouble 
 about her. They liked her still, but she 
 was as if out of College. She never came 
 their way, and, when they went to her, she 
 did not want to see them. Even at the 
 table she was too absorbed to talk or to 
 listen. 
 
 Her Junior year Lydia drew a room in 
 Raymond. The clan was in Strong, the 
 Giffords held Main. Raymond had the 
 greater number of the class. Differences 
 of buildings are nearly as differences of 
 miles at College. Lydia seldom saw her old 
 friends except going to and from recitations. 
 
THE CLAN 213 
 
 She had never really belonged to them : she 
 could not, by her very nature, become one 
 of them. Perhaps, like Dr. Johnson's 
 Scotchman, if she had been caught young, 
 much might have been made of her in that 
 direction. But she was too old when she 
 entered College. She knew all this, that, 
 if she had been really one of them, nothing 
 could have separated her from them. As it 
 was, her absorption in her work and -then 
 her distance were the occasions under which 
 lay the real cause, her own character. She 
 was neither better nor worse than they. 
 She simply was not like them and never could 
 be. She longed as much as ever to be one 
 of them. But, at least, she had memories 
 of past comradeship to console her. 
 
 She was almost as much by herself as the 
 first year. The body of the class still 
 thought of her as a girl in another set, who 
 would not care to know them. She did not 
 try, for her part. Her comfort was her 
 work. She went into that vigorously, even 
 lovingly, spending whole days in the library 
 with James's Psychology or the early play- 
 wrights. 
 
214 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 She began she could not tell how to 
 feel the life of College as it is for all its 
 members, without distinction of class or 
 clique, to understand, albeit dimly, the re- 
 lation of the students to the place. Self- 
 government committees, editorships, presi- 
 dencies of student associations, did not come 
 into being primarily, she reasoned out, to 
 give popular girls a chance to have an out- 
 ward and visible sign of their hold on the 
 affections of two hundred or so others, nor 
 ambitious little Napoleons a field in which 
 to show how they could handle their fellow- 
 beings, but that the business for which Mat- 
 thew Vassar builded his College might get 
 on happily and successfully. 
 
 This was new to Lydia. Stung by the 
 splendor of this sudden thought, she inter- 
 ested herself in all the clubs, committees, 
 and organizations of College. She did not 
 lobby nor pull wires. She was tired of that. 
 She made speeches in class and in Student 
 Association meetings that told for her end ; 
 all the more because, belonging to no party, 
 she could ever speak as she believed. When 
 
THE CLAN 215 
 
 she was given a small office, as sometimes 
 happened, she made the office tell, too. 
 She grew to be a power, though she never 
 suspected it. 
 
 All this time, unperceived by Lydia, the 
 sets, factions, circles, all the groups of 
 girls, were coming together in one united 
 whole. The Class of Ninety -blank was 
 finding itself. 
 
 One morning in April Lydia was called 
 away from breakfast to receive a telegram. 
 Her mother was ill. She started home at 
 once, and for a month College saw her no 
 more. 
 
 She had no real friend there, and so she 
 received no letters. What was there to 
 write about, anyhow? 
 
 A soft, thick mist, through which the 
 lights looked a queer yellow, folded itself 
 all about College as she walked up the path 
 from the Lodge. 
 
 "What are all the girls doing, running 
 back and forth so much?" she thought. 
 " It's not Friday." 
 
 Three Freshmen from Raymond were 
 
216 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 coming out of the door as she entered. She 
 knew them a little. They all laughed as 
 they saw her, after the reasonless manner of 
 their tribe. 
 
 " Oh, Miss Waitely, are we the first to 
 congratulate you ? " 
 
 Then they laughed again, so hard that 
 before they caught breath a Ninety-blank 
 ran down the stairs, carromed into Lydia, 
 steadied herself, and cried as one word, 
 
 " You-are-president-of-Students ! " 
 
 " Students ! Students ! " shrieked an- 
 other, sending her voice ahead of her. 
 
 " Lydia Waitely, president of Ninety- 
 blank's Student Association ! " shouted 
 some one else. From the campus, the 
 Library, Main, Strong, and Raymond 
 poured in the class, and the underclassmen, 
 who didn't know Lydia at all, but who 
 wanted to make a noise and shout, and 
 fell upon Lydia with demonstrations of joy, 
 undignified, grateful, heart-warming. 
 
 In her absence she had been nominated 
 as the strongest, coolest, broadest girl in the 
 class. Elsie GirTbrd had run against her. 
 
THE CLAN 217 
 
 " But she never had much of a show, 
 Lydia," explained one of the clan as she 
 walked over towards Raymond with Lydia. 
 " Of course the girls did talk about Eliza- 
 beth/' the speaker lowered her voice, for 
 Elizabeth, surrounded by friends, was just 
 ahead, " we do all love her so ; but we all 
 felt you were the girl for the position, 
 Lydia." 
 
 Lydia followed the path to Raymond 
 alone. She had won the highest honor in 
 College. She ought to be perfectly happy, 
 and yet . She stopped and looked up at 
 Elizabeth's room. The curtains were up, 
 and she could see it filling with girls. They 
 were talking and laughing burbling in 
 the old dear way once a part of her College 
 life, now out of it forever. 
 
 " We all do love Elizabeth, but you were 
 the girl for the position," she repeated. " I 
 wonder if Elizabeth would like to change 
 places, too." 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 
 
At the First Game 
 
 THE first basket-ball game is the 
 happiest of the year. It's exciting 
 enough to be fun, but not enough to be 
 painful. Of course you want your class to 
 win. You can live, though, if it doesn't. 
 Class rivalry is still in the good-natured 
 state, later it is full of malice and all un- 
 charitableness. Perhaps the real reason is 
 that the first game marks the beginning of 
 those days which are the best a girl ever 
 knows. Spring semester at Vassar. Winter, 
 when even the grigs grew dull, is over. The 
 spring vacation, that mirage ever receding as 
 you approached, is over, too ; but its rest has 
 made a new girl of you. The June exami- 
 nations are too far away, as Vassar counts 
 time, to form even the smallest cloud on the 
 wide, blue sky. 
 
 You know, either by experience or intui- 
 tion, that, for good or ill, your class record 
 
222 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 is closed. You will study no more this 
 semester, till the one grand final cram for 
 the examinations. You may take a book out 
 under the trees, ten to one you'll never open 
 it. You'll lie looking up at the light flicker- 
 ing through the tree-tops or at the new leaves, 
 always restless, always restful, and dream, and 
 be perfectly happy. You'll hear the birds 
 call ; and, though you can't tell for the life of 
 you (unless you belong to the Bird Club) 
 whether they are bobolinks or robins, you'll 
 feel something sweet and novel set a-going 
 within you. You'll gather flowers, the early 
 spring ones, which you will call impartially 
 hepaticas, to the scandal of your room-mate 
 who once studied botany and hasn't yet re- 
 covered from it. You won't write poetry, 
 unless the Miscellany editor has a mortgage 
 on you, but you'll think it and live it a 
 little. 
 
 If you are a Senior, you won't waste any 
 of the precious college time left in just think- 
 ing. You will foregather with two or three 
 loved friends, and talk, and talk, and talk. 
 Books a little, "criticism of life," well, 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 223 
 
 maybe, if you are some kinds of a Senior, 
 but chiefly, and with unflagging joy, college 
 gossip. Field Day, the games, Founders, 
 now almost here, the Senior elections, which 
 don't interest you greatly and which are 
 really badly managed, the way the class has 
 changed since Freshman year, the new self- 
 government rules, the reason Sarah Ralph 
 got her honor and the reason Alice Kaye 
 didn't, the new fellowships, the new Gym 
 floor. 
 
 It's kindly gossip now, for college is be- 
 ginning to encloud itself with the golden 
 haze through which it is to shine forever 
 after in your eyes. Even the Faculty are 
 covered with the mantle of charity. They 
 mean well, poor dears, and are worthy souls 
 in the main. Prejudiced, of course, and apt 
 to err. Who is not ? You forgive the doc- 
 tor for not cabling your family, then in Eu- 
 rope, the night you nearly died with ton- 
 sillitis, though, miraculously, you recovered 
 in time for Mohonk two days later. You 
 even speak with calmness of the professor 
 who imbittered your young life with bur- 
 
VASSAR STORIES 
 
 dens grievous and heavy to bear. As for 
 the girls, you discuss them hours on end. 
 
 All this makes part of the charm of the 
 spring and the first game. 
 
 How good the old Oval looks filled up 
 with girls once more ! How joyful to sit 
 down on the hardest benches man ever de- 
 vised, in a sun that belongs to July properly, 
 and gaze on the teams lying in the shade of 
 the hedge. They are laughing and betting 
 treats at Smith on the game. They'll never 
 be that way again, the strain will grow too 
 sharp, the rivalry too fierce. 
 
 You pity your room-mate, decorously 
 seated in the shade with her mother, while 
 all the time she yearns to be in with the girls 
 and shout and sing. You, who are clad in 
 the Vassar uniform of golf skirt and shirt 
 waist, regard with contempt those clothesome 
 ones, who, " variously bedecked and be- 
 devilled " in frilly, ribbony things, sit in the 
 shade to the left. Your heart softens, how- 
 ever, as you see the little manager of your 
 team, flipping about in a train several inches 
 longer than herself. You feel the bond be- 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 225 
 
 tween the old and new as you never did at 
 an alumnae meeting, when you hear the 
 mother, who has gray hair and graduated in 
 '70, say, " I wish I'd had a chance to play 
 basket ball." 
 
 The girl next you twitches your arm. 
 Poor Ruth ! behold her skirting the edge of 
 things with a man. He is only the second 
 most interesting, and she has struggled to 
 foist him off on somebody, anybody. Men 
 are dear and desirable beasties, but, oh ! not 
 at Vassar. If they would only be more 
 " chirk," and pluck up a bit of spirit while 
 there; but they wear such an "oh-for-a- 
 man-and-a-brother " expression. There is a 
 tale of a man who left his hat in the Senior 
 parlor, which was then vacant. When he re- 
 turned, girls had entered the rooms, myriads 
 of them. They blocked the door, they hov- 
 ered over the hat, concealed beneath a table. 
 He reasoned with his hostess, and he pleaded 
 with her. Then he went home without the 
 hat. 
 
 Your neighbor is beginning a man tale 
 bristling with <c he saids " and " I saids " 
 Hark ! the Freshmen are cheering, 
 
226 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Green but vigorous, 
 Superfine ' ' 
 
 and the Sophomores answer, 
 
 " We're first-rate, 
 We're first-rate." 
 
 Then the Juniors, your class, begin to sing, 
 
 " Once more we'll meet them, 
 Once more defeat them, 
 Passing the ball, just as of yore. 
 Bartlett will dare them, 
 Lefflinwell scare them. 
 How in the world did you find that out ? 
 Done it before. ' ' 
 
 Nannie Parkin jumps up in front of the 
 benches. Nannie's voice, she says herself, 
 " is something fierce." 
 
 " Now then, girls ! " 
 
 "Class of Ninety-blank, just gone 'long, 
 Class of Ninety-blank, just gone 'long, 
 Class of Ninety-blank, just gone 'long, 
 A-cheerin' for its team. 
 Oh, raise up your voices now, 
 Raise up your voices now, 
 And cheer right lustily." 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 227 
 
 Nannie's voice is raised till the surround- 
 ing atmosphere quivers. 
 
 <c Here come the team. Cheer 'em ! 
 Now, one, two, keep your voices down like 
 a man's, and don't shriek." 
 
 " Hikey ! hikey ! hurrah ! , 
 Ninety-blank!" 
 
 In spite of Nannie's admonition the cheer 
 is pretty shrill. Just as much loyalty goes 
 with it as if it were in double-bass, however. 
 
 The teams are out, the Seniors in blue 
 and red, the Juniors in blue and white. 
 There's Nell, the Junior pitcher, big and 
 slow, but, if once her hands get on the ball, 
 into the basket it goes. There's Adelaide, 
 too, springing about as if she were a mass 
 of feathers. And Lou, in the old red suit, 
 that is the team mascot. Look at Julia, 
 banged already. She has the worst luck ! 
 Last year she broke her nose, and jumped 
 up shouting, " Come on, I've only blacked 
 my eye." What's the matter with May ? 
 and Jo ? and Marion ? and anybody P 
 They're all right. The spectators are tell- 
 
228 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ing each other so as fast and as loud as they 
 can. The classes are all right, too, and the 
 college, and the game, and even the profes- 
 sor umpire, chosen for his placid soul and 
 inability to be bullied. 
 
 The umpire throws up the ball, the cap- 
 tains jump for it, the sides rush forward, the 
 game is on. Then every one shouts and 
 cheers, to encourage the team they say, 
 really because they can't keep still. One 
 girl calls to the players by name. She 
 is suppressed. " Don't rattle the man at 
 the bat." Every one is hot, stiff, stepped 
 on by excited friends, mauled by the players 
 in their rush for the ball, and gloriously 
 happy. 
 
 All but Betty Blake. She is miserable. 
 That is all wrong. A basket-ball player has 
 no right to any emotion save devotion to 
 the ball, and Betty is on the team. She is 
 angry ; not passionately, excitedly, but with 
 a kind of freezing fury that makes her very 
 body cold. She has been so since two weeks 
 ago to-morrow, which is Sunday. 
 
 Now Sunday is an unpopular day at 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 229 
 
 Vassar. Various reasons are assigned for 
 this, as compulsory church, Sunday night 
 tea, home letters, and other things which 
 never happen week-days. It's sufficient ex- 
 planation to say it comes after Saturday and 
 before Monday. 
 
 This particular Sunday Betty had begun 
 to scold her room-mate. There was noth- 
 ing new about that. The room-mate was 
 irritating and lovable, a not unusual com- 
 bination among Vassar or other women. 
 Betty adored her. She bore with her with 
 beautiful resignation twenty-nine days a 
 month, the thirtieth she scolded her soundly. 
 Janet, that was the room-mate, accepted the 
 scolding sweetly, then went on being as 
 irritating as before. It was a kind of bar- 
 gain between them. This Sunday lecture 
 was only two weeks removed from the last 
 going over, therefore Janet resented it. 
 They fought, decently at first, afterwards 
 not. Betty, blazing and stammering, hurled 
 insulting accusations at Janet, who, white 
 and level-voiced, replied with cruel sarcasm. 
 They had not spoken since. 
 
230 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 Once in the dark, when Betty lay curled 
 up in a corner of the couch, Janet had stolen 
 in and knelt beside her. 
 
 " I was wrong," she had whispered, " I 
 was most to blame, I am sorry." 
 
 Betty had stared down into her eyes, very 
 large and soft in the twilight, and had hated 
 her with all her strength. Janet had not 
 tried again. 
 
 Betty had played on her class team ever 
 since she entered college. She was little 
 and light, but tremendously quick and 
 plucky. Janet, belonging to the class 
 above, though the strongest girl in it, had 
 never played until the previous fall, and 
 then only on the scrub. This was her first 
 match. The girls laughed at the Senior- 
 Junior friendship, " wait till you play against 
 one another in the games." Betty and 
 Janet had grinned at one another. Now 
 Betty's one thought was to beat Janet. She 
 hated the Senior team because Janet was on 
 it. Some way it was always Janet and she 
 that rushed for the ball at the same time. 
 When the umpire plecided for her, she felt a 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 231 
 
 thrill of triumphant hate that turned her hot 
 all over. She watched Janet's every move- 
 ment. Look at that throw ! and how steady 
 Jan was in passing ! Why, she, Betty, 
 might practise ten years before she could 
 crack the ball 
 
 "Wake up, Betty Blake ! " shouted some 
 one, not in anger, but in sorrow, for Betty 
 usually " played ball from the ground up," 
 and was therefore beloved. 
 
 Betty realized that for one golden second 
 the ball had been hers. She had only 
 stared stupidly at it. Janet had it now by 
 the Senior goal. Betty joined the guards, 
 who were leaping, and striking at the air, to 
 catch it the instant it left Janet's hands. 
 Oh, yes, Jan was a cool one. She wasn't 
 going to be rattled into a weak throw nor 
 forced to hold the ball over time. She 
 tossed it and caught it and tossed it again. 
 If she could only wrench it out of her hands ! 
 
 " O^h ! " every one was calling in amazed 
 protest. Betty knew then that she had 
 sprung upon Janet and torn the ball furi- 
 ously from her. She was called the "whit- 
 
232 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 est " player on the Oval, yet she had done 
 what was as ridiculous as it was unfair. She 
 watched the try for goal gained on her foul 
 with something like murder in her heart. 
 
 "What's the matter with Betty?" ran 
 along the benches. Betty heard it. No one 
 answered, " She's all right." They only 
 shrugged, and shook their heads. 
 
 " Keep cool, Bet," whispered her manager, 
 as the teams rested between innings, " Just 
 play like you used to, and we'll beat the 
 earth." 
 
 " You've got to take a brace, though ; 
 you're no good so far," said the captain with 
 frankness. 
 
 Betty said nothing. She looked over at 
 Janet, and thought, " I'll kill her." The 
 thought shocked her a little, not much. 
 Nothing mattered but her awful anger. 
 
 The first inning had' been played warily. 
 Now the pace was furious. Both teams 
 played desperately in the desire to score. 
 Some one made a swift throw for the basket. 
 The ball went wild in among the benches. 
 Three girls rushed for it, heads down, Janet 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 233 
 
 in front. The bench under which the ball 
 was still rolling was a heavy iron one from 
 way over by Music Hall. Its sharp, hard 
 corner projected sideways almost like a spike. 
 The first girl to plunge under it would 
 strike it with immense force, that of her own 
 impetus and that of the weight of the two 
 girls behind. Basket ball is not fraught with 
 perils ; as a rule, a big bruise or a lame ankle 
 being the usual casualties. But, if a girl's 
 head met that iron, something was going to 
 break. 
 
 No one seemed to notice the bench. 
 Betty did. She stood in just the position, 
 parallel to it, to see its projection. Jan 
 wouldn't be killed, but she'd be hurt, and 
 that in Jan's case was as bad. For Janet 
 was a coward, a cry-baby, a muff. She wept 
 and shrieked over a cut or a burn. She 
 mourned for days over the mere memory 
 of past suffering. Betty, brought up with, 
 or by, boys who regarded girls as on a par 
 with caterpillars, had been forced to learn the 
 stoicism of a red Indian in order to be even 
 tolerated. Her friend's weakness scandal- 
 
234 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 ized her. She concealed it as she would 
 have kleptomania. Janet was ashamed of 
 it herself. Luck and an extreme canniness 
 in exposing herself to danger had kept her 
 secret. The class were proud of her as a 
 model athlete, strong, cool, and brave. Jan 
 would scream and tear up the grass and dis- 
 grace herself generally. The Juniors would 
 pity her. Betty could not endure pity. 
 The Seniors would never look upon her in 
 just the same way again. Oh, Fate was 
 bringing a sweet revenge. 
 
 All that, so long in the telling, clicked 
 through Betty's mind in a flash. Then 
 something older than her hatred, older than 
 that dreary Sunday, older even than her 
 class spirit, hurled her in sideways between 
 bench and girls. Her body sprawled out 
 along the iron frame something after the 
 manner of a fender. 
 
 The three girls rose at once, though two 
 of them would have preferred to remain on 
 the ground till such time as their breath 
 returned unto them. Betty sat up. She 
 wasn't at all pale, and she smiled cheerfully. 
 
AT THE FIRST GAME 235 
 
 This was really rather good even for a red 
 Indian; for she was just coming out of the 
 state described by Kipling as " having left 
 your stomach behind you," and was enter- 
 ing another caused by the two knee bones 
 grinding over one another as they departed 
 from their socket. This latter sensation 
 needs to be experienced to be appreciated. 
 She looked around for Janet. All her hatred 
 seemed gone ; and as for her anger, why, 
 that was weeks ago. Jan was good old Jan, 
 and she had just wadded herself in between 
 that dear old tab and suppose she hadn't 
 jumped quick. The thought made her 
 sicker than all her pain. 
 
 "You needn't get out a search warrant 
 for broken bones, because there ain't none," 
 she said to Janet, who was feeling her with 
 strong, soft hands. " I've jagged my knee, 
 that's all." 
 
 Helping hands bundled the invalid, who 
 had been wheeled to the game, out on a 
 bench, and brought the infirmary chair up 
 to Betty. She remarked in crisp tones to 
 the girl who carelessly banged her knee on 
 
236 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the wheel, " I'll bat you if you do that 
 again. " This showed she was her own man 
 once more. Janet smiled lovingly. She 
 didn't look deep into Betty's eyes nor press 
 her hand, because she wasn't some one in a 
 book. She ran back to the team, calling, 
 " See you in the infirmary when this 's over. 
 And Betty answered with the old fierce- 
 ness dear to Janet's heart, "You shan't! 
 Get rubbed down, and go to bed." 
 
ON BACCALAUREATE SUNDAY 
 
On Baccalaureate Sunday 
 
 BACCALAUREATE Sunday that year 
 was a beautiful day. The air was 
 soft and warm, sporty little breezes frisked 
 in and out among the trees, and long, 
 cool shadows, made by the far-off June 
 clouds, lay over the campus. The trees 
 were white, pink, and palest yellow with 
 blossoms, which smelled sweet as far as you 
 could see them. Little, late violets pied 
 with purple the deep green of the Oval. 
 The campus stretching out beyond Strong 
 to the Pines was white with daisies. All 
 the prim little flower-beds which Henry, 
 the college gardener, minds so carefully, had 
 bloomed out with a brave array of pansies, 
 roses, and lilies. Birds called to one another 
 in shy voices, and butterflies drifted dreamily 
 about. 
 
 Every one who could was out doors, and 
 on Baccalaureate Sunday that means all 
 
240 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 College. It is the last Sunday that year for 
 the underclassmen, therefore they wish to 
 make the most of it. But for the Seniors 
 it is the very last day of College ; they cling 
 to it lovingly, pathetically. For to-morrow 
 will come flooding in the hordes of mothers, 
 sisters, brothers, and an occasional bored 
 father to take possession of the college 
 and the collegians. Vassar Commencement 
 week is pretty and interesting to the old 
 grads., but it is not home. The holiday air, 
 the many strangers, the alumnae of other, 
 far-back classes, even the girls themselves 
 in an unceasing condition of good clothes 
 and good manners, make it a different place 
 to those who love it best as it is every day 
 for nine months in the year, noisy, rushing, 
 busy, absorbed in itself, and heedless of the 
 outside world. 
 
 Ninety-blank in its youth had been rent 
 by schisms, over its three candidates for 
 class presidents, its inability to get every- 
 body to mutiny at the same time against 
 the Powers, and other weighty matters. But 
 it had been welded together by pressure 
 
On the way to the Circle 
 
 Watching the Basket-ball Game 
 
BACCALAUREATE 241 
 
 from without ; for the other classes con- 
 sidered it unduly pleased with itself, and the 
 Faculty objected to its attitude of "have yez 
 a governmint? thin I'm agin ut." All of 
 which rejoiced Ninety-blank, who dreaded 
 naught but indifference. Now not even the 
 scars of the old wounds remained, the class 
 was at one, united on the common ground 
 of love for itself as the brightest, most in- 
 dependent, most original class that ever 
 entered College. It dated a decided change 
 in College life from its arrival, and spoke of 
 itself, in the unabashed frankness natural to 
 it, as the bridge between the old order and 
 the new. Other classes have thought the 
 same, and in a sense it is true of each. All 
 the spring the girls had been seeing as much 
 of one another as they could, against the 
 time when the hard separation would come. 
 This Sunday groups of threes, fours, and 
 fives, were starting out in all directions, 
 some for a last walk up the shady road past 
 the Farms, some to cut 'cross country to 
 Sunrise Hill, or the queer slope somewhere 
 over by the Fair Grounds, others to lie on 
 
242 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the grass back of the Observatory, or in the 
 shady nooks near the Gym. Their arms 
 were around one another's shoulders. They 
 were talking and laughing as carelessly as if 
 College had just begun for them. Each girl 
 realized, with a faltering heart, that before 
 her lay Class Supper, the happiest, the sad- 
 dest night in her College life, and the un- 
 lightened gloom of "pack-up Thursday," 
 but each girl had resolved to pretend just 
 one day longer that the joy of College 
 wasn't all over forever. 
 
 Early in the spring the talk had been 
 chiefly of "jobs" for next year. Rich and 
 poor alike were fired to enter upon some 
 gainful pursuit. At one time it seemed as if 
 all Ninety-blank wished to teach the young. 
 Knots of girls gathered in the corridors dis- 
 cussing the relative virtues of Fisk's Agency 
 or Mrs. Young-Fulton's, and on entering a 
 Senior's room the visitor would be greeted 
 by, " Say, do you think six hundred dollars, 
 and board in the school, is good ? " " If you 
 were I, would you dare attempt to teach three 
 subjects you don't know a word about ? " 
 
BACCALAUREATE 243 
 
 Now each girl had either obtained the desire 
 of her heart or was waiting till fall to make 
 another try at it. The question of a career 
 troubled the air no more. Friends were 
 making mutual plans for the summer and 
 consoling one another with promises of let- 
 ters, those miserable makeshifts for daily 
 companionship. Those who lived in the 
 same State were rejoicing that some Vas- 
 sarites would be near them with whom they 
 could have miniature class reunions once in a 
 while. Those who lived in remote and in- 
 accessible regions were bewailing, like Sally 
 Dean, " There isn't a blamed girl within a 
 thousand miles of me." 
 
 Dearest of all to the class this last day 
 were the reminiscences of its past. The girls 
 repeated to one another the old jokes, laughed 
 at first in Freshman year, the old passwords, 
 and the dear old stories. They grew inco- 
 herent with laughter over recollections of the 
 night they broke up the Senior Howl with a 
 larger and squarer one of their own ; over 
 their Tree Ceremonies and the cc ball " that 
 followed ; over Junior year at Strong, when 
 
244 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 the foundations of the building and of Self- 
 Government were visibly affected ; over the 
 spread at Mrs. McGlynn's after they won 
 the championship in basket ball. They re- 
 counted to one another, with tears of joy, 
 their sufferings Sophomore year over " oral 
 quizzes " endured with only one other vic- 
 tim, their toils over the series of maps which 
 were supposed to illumine for them the dark- 
 ness of mediaeval history, their shame, at the 
 end of the Sophomore Mid-years, when, in 
 obedience to a summons, they slunk stealth- 
 ily down to Room 79, and their amazement 
 when they saw in the corridor outside sixty 
 other girls likewise abashed and furtive. An 
 outsider would not have understood nor been 
 amused. But they loved it all with their 
 whole hearts. Then, when their breath 
 failed, they would take hold of one another 
 hard with a sudden chill realization that it 
 was all over now, the work and the fun, the 
 happy-go-lucky, free, careless, warm life of 
 College. Oh, yes, there were cc gude times " 
 coming, they knew, but they would not be 
 College ones. They would be dignified. 
 
BACCALAUREATE 245 
 
 sensible women of the outside world, in a 
 little house in a little corner of that world 
 somewhere ; and gone forever would be the 
 dear old tribal life with its all things in com- 
 mon, from ideas to umbrellas, its intense 
 happiness and its woes so overwhelmingly 
 great that they were almost a kind of pleas- 
 ure, its hail-fellow-well-met acquaintances, 
 and its close, enduring friendships. "A 
 woman may be an angel some time, but she 
 can never be a girl again." And girlhood at 
 Vassar is such a gift ! 
 
 Kate Holabush sat on one of the seats 
 under the pines which border the walk past 
 the Gym. On this day of universal com- 
 panionship she was alone. There was no 
 one she wished especially to be with, nor 
 any one, she knew, who wished to be with 
 her. Like the Miller of the Dee, she cared 
 for nobody, no, not she, and nobody cared 
 for her. Which, when you think of it, is 
 about as sad a state of things as can be, 
 only Kate had never looked at it that way. 
 She was not one of those drab persons 
 whom no one likes because no one ever 
 
246 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 really distinguishes them from the surround- 
 ing atmosphere. Kate was the sort that is 
 felt the moment it enters the room. She 
 had a fine mind, a lively wit, and a pretty 
 face. Moreover, she could do a great many 
 things, sing, sketch, play the guitar, act, 
 write dainty verse and readable prose ex- 
 tremely well, was always artistically dressed, 
 and had the graceful manner of a woman 
 used to the world. 
 
 She had entered College under disadvan- 
 tages. She was a Special until the middle 
 of her second year, when she joined the 
 Sophomores. The class never took her to 
 itself as one of " us." She was unfortunate, 
 too, in living in one of the cottages across 
 the Lake where she was the only boarder. 
 When she came over to the College, she 
 lived in a single. Yet it was more than the 
 ill-luck of those early years, hard to over- 
 come as that is, that made Kate absolutely 
 friendless. 
 
 Some said it was because they did not like 
 her habit of ridiculing everything and every- 
 body, nor the little sarcastic smile which she 
 
BACCALAUREATE 247 
 
 always wore when talking. Others thought 
 her hard and cold-natured, still others that 
 she was " fast," in desire they must have 
 meant, for at Vassar no girl is fast in act. 
 She cannot be. There is no chance. Most 
 of them, however, merely shrugged and said, 
 
 cc Oh, I don't know. I just don't like 
 her, that's all." 
 
 Kate never troubled herself to find out 
 the reason. She knew she was disliked, and 
 she had no rosy illusions about being a 
 misunderstood genius or a spirit too delicate 
 for the crowd. She rather looked down on 
 the girls, as crude and immature, and sup- 
 posed that they resented the attitude. She 
 was fond of quoting Stevenson when she 
 saw them ramping with excitement over 
 some College affair or deep in woe for a 
 small cause, " Youth was a great time, but 
 somewhat fussy." " Naturally," she thought, 
 " they don't like me." 
 
 She was not lonely : she had too much to 
 do. Her work interested her, and she spent 
 a good deal of time on it. The unresting 
 Miscellany and Vassarion editors claimed her 
 
248 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 for stones and illustrations. She also wrote 
 for the papers often and for some of the 
 less known magazines. Her cleverness made 
 people want her for Hall Plays, Phil, com- 
 mittees, and Chapter Cup competitions. 
 She was always invited to the big spreads 
 and formal teas. These things took the 
 place, with Kate Holabush, of friends. 
 
 So she felt no envy as she watched the 
 girls go swinging by together. She didn't 
 want to link arms with Sarah Ralph, and 
 Molly Omstead, and Barbara Sterling. 
 Sarah was wearisomely intense. She talked 
 about " subjectivity " and " objectivity," 
 " mentality " and " physicality," topics which 
 bored Kate. Molly was decidedly amateur 
 yet in her efforts to think. Barbara was 
 unbearable with her lack of humor and her 
 ever present morals. 
 
 The girls greeted her as they passed. 
 Two of them, moved by the new feeling of 
 kinship, stopped to talk. They even asked 
 her to walk with them, up through the Pines, 
 behind the bridge. Kate did not go. 
 
 Left to herself, she pulled a letter out 
 
BACCALAUREATE 249 
 
 from between the leaves of the book she had 
 been making a pretence of reading. Two 
 little lines came between her eyes, and she 
 poked the ground with the toe of her shoe. 
 The letter was from the editor of a paper in 
 an Eastern city, who had often published 
 her articles, offering her a position. The 
 paper was called a literary one, but its sale 
 was due to the society gossip which filled its 
 columns. This latter was always imperti- 
 nent, often scandalous. She was asked to 
 be the editor of this department, the gatherer 
 up and putter into amusing form of all the 
 little intimate news of the place, the shadier, 
 the better. She had a cousin on the paper. 
 He had suggested her to take the place of 
 the former editor, because, as she was in- 
 formed, her youth and personal appearance 
 would make it possible for her to go to 
 many places closed against a less attractive 
 reporter, and thus to gain more news. 
 
 It was not a nice position. Kate winced 
 as she thought of pushing herself in among 
 perfect strangers to find out their private 
 affairs, and then writing them up in a cheap, 
 
250 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 newspaper style. She had dreamed of quite 
 a different life when she was out of college. 
 But it was a chance to be in a city that pos- 
 sessed many of what people call "attractions." 
 She could go to concerts, lectures, the 
 theatre, she would have time to keep up her 
 other writing and the studying she enjoyed. 
 Most important of all, the salary was large, 
 immense it seemed in Kate's eyes. 
 
 If any of the girls had stopped to think 
 about it, they would have said that Kate 
 Holabush was rich. Her room, her way of 
 dressing, her lavishness with money, her 
 ease with all the elegancies of living, seemed 
 to prove this. 
 
 Really, Kate was the daughter of a poor 
 lawyer in some out-of-the-way town. She 
 had come to college on a little legacy left 
 her by her grandfather. Her work for the 
 magazines, skill in making a little money go 
 a long way, and a winter in New York with 
 a gay aunt, accounted for the rest. She 
 neither would nor could depend on her par- 
 ents after leaving college, there were younger 
 sisters who must be educated. She was wise 
 
BACCALAUREATE 251 
 
 enough to know that the success as a writer 
 which buys pretty gowns at Vassar is never- 
 theless not great enough to pay all one's 
 bills outside of college. What could she 
 do ? Teach ? She could have a place in 
 a public school. She had no wish to feed 
 childish minds and see them grow, and the 
 yards of red tape which she knew she must 
 unroll every day in such work made her 
 shiver. She could help her father in his 
 office. She hated the dull little town and all 
 its wearisome inhabitants. 
 
 Here was her chance to escape drudgery 
 and make a fortune, quick. What if it were 
 a rather shabby sort of position ? Greater 
 minds than hers had stooped lower. It was 
 a good push up. Her work there would 
 count with other editors. She would save 
 her salary and start out for something better 
 in a year or two. She need never think of 
 this mean position the minute she was out 
 of it. She could 
 
 " Rise by its aid 
 
 And its aid disown." 
 
252 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 She had until the end of the week to \ink 
 it over. Her decision was made now. 
 
 The sun began to shine in on her through 
 the trees. She left the bench. The shad- 
 ows over by the Observatory looked pleas- 
 ant. She walked toward them, trailing her 
 light gown over the grass. She stopped for 
 an instant to watch a party of girls coming 
 down the path and held back the bough of 
 a fir-tree to see them better. Her tall, slim 
 figure in its faint green draperies defined 
 against the darkness of the firs made a 
 charming little picture. It might have been 
 another of Christina Emmet Sherwood's 
 " Ladies in Green." A puffy old gentleman, 
 passing, saw her, and exclaimed to his com- 
 panion, " A sweet girl-graduate/' 
 
 Kate heard him. " Sweet girl-graduate ! " 
 she murmured with angry contempt for the 
 ridiculous, hackneyed expression. " Why 
 are Such allowed to exist?" 
 
 If the worthy old gentleman could have 
 seen her face as she spoke, he would have 
 taken back his opinion with speed. 
 
 Kate continued slowly across the grass. 
 
BACCALAUREATE 253 
 
 She failed to notice, until full upon them, a 
 clump of girls stretched out under the trees. 
 
 "Hello, Kate Holabush," called one, 
 "come play with us." 
 
 To her surprise, and she could see to 
 theirs, as well, Kate sat down. 
 
 " Have a pillow," said Sally Dean, push- 
 ing one toward her. " We're talking about 
 careers, who in the school we think will have 
 them." 
 
 "Who do you think ? " asked Janet Pom- 
 eroy. 
 
 Kate laughed, "I " 
 
 " You can't tell a thing about it," broke 
 in Betty Blake. " My sister says the gen- 
 iuses of her class, the ones everybody ex- 
 pected would astonish the world, never did 
 a blessed thing but get married." 
 
 "Yes, and some mouse of a girl that 
 never opens her mouth in class or anywhere 
 else will do some great stunt," said Sarah 
 Ralph. 
 
 " All the same I believe Arna Kellar will 
 be something unusual," said Janet. 
 
 " Will be ! She is now," said Sarah. 
 
254 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 " Our class are going to do queer, interest- 
 ing things/' said Sally quickly to turn the 
 talk from Arna, whose experience was apt to 
 provoke discussion. 
 
 " I tell you what, sirs, its a terrible re- 
 sponse, as our gardener says, to be Vassar 
 College's keeper," said Sarah solemnly. 
 "You know what I mean. To think you 
 stand for the higher education of women as 
 Vassar recognizes it." 
 
 " Sarah ! " cried Betty, " never, never did 
 I think I'd hear you use that loathsome 
 expression, ( the higher education of women ' ! 
 It sounds like oh, nobody must ever say 
 it. It brands a person if she does." 
 
 " Isn't it absurd and old-fashioned ! " 
 agreed Sally. " But all the same I know 
 just what Sarah means. Oh, the woes I 
 suffer for college when I'm home. I live in 
 a town where not one man in a hundred 
 goes to college, and I, even I, am the only 
 girl that's ever been. The people act and 
 talk as if I were some kind of a strange fowl, 
 like Dr. Holmes's Huma. They send over 
 to ask me how to pronounce new words, 
 
BACCALAUREATE 255 
 
 and whether they should say nayther, me 
 wages is low/ after the manner of the Irish- 
 man in my fondly loved, if ancient, tale. I 
 don't know if they really do have such a re- 
 spect for my supposed learning or if they 
 just think they have to pretend to. Last 
 summer one of them introduced me to a 
 whole porchful of strangers as c my friend, 
 Miss Dean, from Vassar.' Imagine any one 
 introducing my brother as c Mr. Dean from 
 Yale/ There was a woman present, too, 
 who has forgotten more than I'll ever know. 
 She probably thought me a regular want-wit 
 that believed four years in college equalled 
 brains, and cultivation and travel, and " 
 
 " Come live with me, dear, if you're 
 troubled that way," said Janet as Sally's 
 breath seemed to run out. " No girl my 
 friends ever knew has been to college ex- 
 cept myself. But they don't look upon me 
 as any marvel. They and their sisters, and 
 their daughters, have all had three or four 
 years' travel in Europe with governesses, 
 lessons with masters, private lectures, etc. 
 They regard college as excellent for girls 
 
256 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 who have to be teachers, or for those who 
 have no opportunities of any kind at home. 
 But for others ! My family think it's a kind 
 of bear-garden. They watch me to see me 
 grip my meat firmly in my hands, and I 
 know it's a surprise every time they observe 
 me come downstairs, they look for my de- 
 scent via the banisters." 
 
 " Well ! if they are your family, they're 
 very narrow-minded ! " cried Sarah, voicing 
 the general rage at this unheard of view of 
 women's colleges. 
 
 Janet laughed. " I just wanted you to 
 see the responsibility I have to college. I 
 not only have to live up to a high standard, 
 as Sally does, but I have to hold up the 
 standard besides." 
 
 " I wish," it was the slow voice of Molly 
 Omstead, " I could do something for college. 
 I'm proud of it. I think it's great even if 
 your New Yorkers don't, Jan., and I wish 
 I could make it say c good girl, Molly/ 
 about me. But I'm so awful ordinary ! I 
 can't do anything. Much as ever I got 
 through my Senior Finals. I want to do 
 something, if I only could ! " 
 
BACCALAUREATE 257 
 
 " Start a school of athletics for women in 
 Oakland," said Sally. 
 
 u No, start a Woman's Exchange," said 
 Norma Willett, a quiet girl who never said 
 much, " where you tote cakes from Mrs. 
 McGlynn's, bring huge bundles from town, 
 sit up all night with quiddly girls, make 
 everybody's bed, wash all the dishes from 
 your neighbors' spreads, and do little things 
 like that for nothing." 
 
 The others all smiled at Molly. Kate 
 thought, with a sudden odd little feeling, 
 that no girl, not even her sisters, had ever 
 looked at her just that way. 
 
 " I tell you," went on Molly as if she had 
 been disputed, " I just love old Vassar." 
 
 cc I do honestly think that every woman 
 who is trying to be broader-minded, and 
 higher-idealed, and sweeter-lived is on trial, 
 not only for herself, but for her theories. 
 So is every man. We do represent Vassar's 
 ideals. We don't stand or fall for ourselves 
 any more, but for it. It it frightens me, 
 but I'm glad, too. I hope I won't disgrace 
 it." Janet paused, a little red in the face. 
 
258 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 She had followed Stevenson's advice, " When 
 you are ashamed to speak, always speak." 
 
 No one answered. They were all think- 
 ing with Janet, but had not her courage. 
 The sudden onslaught of a girl calling, 
 
 " Janet Pomeroy ! Betty ! Sally ! some- 
 one is in the parlor to see you," was wel- 
 come. 
 
 " It's my family ! " 
 
 "And my sisters." 
 
 " And my brother." 
 
 The others jumped up, too, to find out 
 if any of their guests had come on the same 
 train. Only Molly stayed behind with 
 Kate. The former lay on her back, looking 
 up at the sky. She rolled over suddenly 
 and, propping her chin in her hands, said, 
 quickly and shyly, 
 
 4C I want to tell you. When they were all 
 talking about the girls who . are going to 
 succeed and make the college proud, I 
 thought of you, right off. You're so 
 talented and energetic and Oh, I know 
 you'll do a big thing all right. I want to 
 congratulate you beforehand, and Col- 
 lege." 
 
BACCALAUREATE 259 
 
 " Thank you," said Kate. She could not, 
 for once in her life, think of any neat and 
 appropriate reply. Molly's candid gray eyes 
 disconcerted her as much as the speech sur- 
 prised her. 
 
 " 1 wanted to tell you," repeated the other 
 with boyish awkwardness. " Guess I'll take 
 a tramp now, good-bye/' She started off 
 with the abruptness startling to non- 
 Vassarites. 
 
 Kate sat and thought. This idea of 
 obligation and responsibility to College was 
 new to her. Molly had focussed it from the 
 general to the particular, too. Probably in 
 every boy's life there is a moment when he 
 first feels the stir of that illogical emotion 
 known as patriotism. Kate was recognizing 
 the existence of what is a sort of patriotism. 
 If she did not experience the emotion her- 
 self, at least she had become aware of it in 
 others. 
 
 That night, as she sat in the darkened 
 chapel listening to the organ recital, the 
 conversation of the afternoon came back to 
 her, intensified in force because all wound 
 
2 6o VASSAR STORIES 
 
 about with music. She had talent, un- 
 doubtedly, a little at any rate. She could do 
 something not unworthy what Janet had 
 called Vassar ideals. Her position as news- 
 monger for a third-rate paper ! That was a 
 work any college should, be proud to have 
 its graduates enter, truly ! Doubtless she 
 would be pointed out next year as a noble 
 illustration of what Vassar could accomplish ! 
 Fot fully a minute Kate felt hot with shame 
 that was not'all for herself. Then she forgot 
 all about it in listening to a favorite largo. 
 Yet just then college loyalty was born within 
 her. Tiny as the least of all seeds it was, 
 but there none the less. 
 
 It was a " persistent cat," that conversa- 
 tion. Kate thought of it the next day when 
 her guests, troops of relatives invited with 
 the expectation that they would refuse, but 
 who had accepted instead, and friends of her 
 year in New York, began to arrive. Even 
 the labor of reconciling the elderly ones to 
 the extraordinary lodgings provided for them 
 in out-of-the-way cottages, and of showing 
 the younger ones the sights, did not wholly 
 distract her. 
 
BACCALAUREATE 261 
 
 Commencement week is a rush from 
 Monday morning, when people begin to 
 appear, to Thursday afternoon, when you 
 sink a tearful, lifeless wreck in the train 
 which is to take you home. 
 
 Kate had more of the excitement and life 
 than most of the others. Besides her guests, 
 among whom were a couple of exceedingly 
 likable young men, she was to play at the 
 concert Monday night, attend the Alumnae 
 luncheon Tuesday in virtue of her position 
 as president of a club, be one of the two 
 class historians Tuesday at the Class Day 
 exercises, and sing Commencement between 
 two of the speeches, to relieve the strain on 
 the parents, who are not accustomed to con- 
 sider Colonial Expansion, the Poetry of 
 Thucydides, the Function of the Novel, 
 and the Relation of Mathematics to Life, all 
 in one morning. 
 
 Kate was perfectly cool as she walked in 
 the long, gay procession winding out of 
 Main around the campus to the platform in 
 front of the great semicircle laid out in the 
 shadow of Chapel. She had spent weeks on 
 
262 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 her speech. She knew it by heart, she had 
 repeated it over so many, many times that it 
 ran of itself. Kate was not the sort of girl 
 to be stage-struck, either. The class had 
 pronounced unqualified praise on her gown, 
 which was all lace and ribbons and graceful 
 folds and soft color effects. 
 
 Her election to this place was one of the 
 many acts of Ninety-blank which showed its 
 devotion to its honor and fame. Betty 
 Blake was much more beloved, so was Janet 
 Pomeroy, than either Kate or the other 
 historian. But the class knew those two 
 were the ones to do it most credit, and so 
 their election had been unanimous. Kate 
 had determined to exceed even its expecta- 
 tion of her. 
 
 When, as her cultivated, distinct voice 
 went on, she saw both the old classes present, 
 too remote in time to be interested in 
 Ninety-blank, and the new ones, so near 
 that they were hostile, begin to laugh and 
 clap enthusiastically, she felt that delicious 
 thrill which is the reward of none save the 
 public speaker. She had looked forward to 
 
BACCALAUREATE 263 
 
 it. Yet it was so different from all her other 
 former appearances had produced in her. 
 She found herself thinking even as she 
 talked. 
 
 " Oh, now, you see Ninety-blank can do 
 something besides make a noise and win 
 championships." 
 
 This was surely queer for Kate. 
 
 She paused an instant at the end of her 
 speech. All the audience was laughing and 
 applauding now. She could see mothers 
 who knew little of college, and fathers who 
 cared less, beaming and pounding. Girls 
 and men from other colleges, and those from 
 none, nodded and fanned with enjoyment. 
 She had achieved a triumph, a college speech 
 which appealed to the outside world. She 
 heard a man close to the platform say, 
 
 " Mighty clever, that ! " 
 
 Kate wanted to lean over to him and cry, 
 
 " This is the kind of thing Vassar College 
 does for a girl. Do you wonder we're proud 
 of her?" 
 
 But Kate had never been proud of her till 
 that minute. The four steps backward from 
 
264 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 her position to her seat in the ranks made 
 a patriot out of an alien. She enjoyed the 
 evening's reception immensely. It is a 
 monstrosity of a girl who does not like to 
 have clever people seek her out in the midst 
 of a crowd to tell her that she has been 
 witty, and interesting, and altogether charm- 
 ing. With Kate this praise had the effect 
 of a tribute to her virtue. Had she not 
 shown college in a good light ? 
 
 Commencement was over. So was the 
 Class Supper, nearly. The flowers that 
 filled Strong dining-room were beginning 
 to fade, the pink-shaded candles on the 
 long table flickered uncertainly. Every one 
 had laughed and cheered and sung through- 
 out the whole feast. Now the toasts were 
 over, the girls were up for the last songs, 
 the class one and Alma Mater. Each girl 
 crossed hands, her left hand to her right 
 neighbor, her right to her left. Then they 
 all swung back and forth in one great circle, 
 and sang till the walls echoed. There are a 
 great many verses to the class song. Some- 
 way, as the fifth and sixth were sung, the 
 
BACCALAUREATE 265 
 
 volume of sound grew fainter and lower. 
 Only a few voices took up Alma Mater, and 
 those failed pitifully at the end. 
 
 " Now, then, let's cheer our president,'* 
 cried the toastmaster huskily. 
 
 Everybody looked at the little president, 
 whose face was hidden in the shadow of a 
 great bunch of roses she had just raised. 
 The sight of her rallied the class. It 
 cheered as of old. 
 
 " Now, the College," said the president. 
 The roses shook in her hand. Every one 
 cheered. 
 
 " Now, Ninety-blank, God bless it ! " 
 
 No sound followed. The circle broke. 
 Some of the girls dropped into the chairs, 
 put their heads down on the table, and cried 
 openly like little children. Others made for 
 the corridors and the dark of the campus. 
 It was all over forever. There was no more 
 Ninety-blank ! 
 
 Kate had sung with the others. When 
 Alma Mater was begun, she had noticed how 
 the hand holding one of hers tightened and 
 how the voice on the other side trembled. 
 
266 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 The girl opposite was looking straight down 
 at the table, the light showed how her face 
 quivered. Kate stopped singing. What 
 had she missed in college that these girls 
 had gained? What was there in it that 
 made them love it so passionately ? She 
 had taken an honor, that girl over there with 
 her face buried in the shoulder of her neigh- 
 bor had flunked three exams, yet the other 
 had won something which she did not even 
 understand. Tears rose to Kate's own eyes, 
 not for what she was losing, but for what 
 she had never owned. Was she a stranger 
 to all the real meaning of college as she was 
 to the sadness of this night? Was it noth- 
 ing to her after these four years ? Had she 
 none of it to call her own, now that it could 
 never come back ? 
 
 The responsibility to College ! The talk 
 with the girls and Molly Sunday ! And 
 then her position on the paper ! They all 
 flashed into her mind, and stayed there. 
 Here, at least, was something she had 
 caught from those flying years, something 
 as much hers as it was any of the sorrowful 
 
BACCALAUREATE 267 
 
 girls. She had lost she knew not what 
 only that it seemed very beautiful and prec- 
 ious to the others. But the honor of the 
 college, the power to raise or lower its name, 
 was hers equally with them. The logic of 
 all that was, to her, to refuse the position, 
 which unworthy herself was unworthy 
 Vassar. 
 
 She walked back to Main behind the 
 silent, dismal groups of girls. She felt 
 really gay. For the first time in her life she 
 knew what college spirit meant. Once in a 
 while she lamented her folly inwardly and 
 she smiled derisively at it all. But the 
 happiness remained. 
 
 She lighted the gas and began to pack 
 for an early departure. No girl, however 
 balanced she is or however limited her time, 
 thinks of packing till after Class Supper. 
 Then she wrote a polite note to the editor, 
 declining his offer. 
 
 "Til post it the first thing in the morn- 
 ing. No, I won't. If I wait till then, my 
 common sense or what's left of it after 
 this week will prevent me. If I'm not 
 
268 VASSAR STORIES 
 
 a fool right away now, I'll never have the 
 courage to be again." 
 
 She dressed herself carefully, Kate would 
 have been well-dressed at a fire, or an earth- 
 quake even, and crept downstairs. The 
 night had gone, day had not yet come. It 
 was that queer, unreal time just at dawn. 
 Kate ran down the path to the Lodge and 
 out along the road to Arlington as long as 
 her breath held out. After that she walked 
 swiftly till she came to the letter-box by the 
 grocery store. She dropped the letter in 
 the box. 
 
 "There! it's gone!" she said, adding 
 whimsically, " I suppose I can telegraph, 
 c Pay no attention to letter. I accept.' ' 
 
 Broad day had come when she walked 
 slowly up from the Lodge. The reaction 
 from her exciting week was beginning to 
 steal over her, she was dead tired. She 
 stood still on the walk. Old Main was 
 before her, silent, big, impressive, its dark 
 red sides hidden under thick green ivy, its 
 towers beginning to gleam with the first 
 touch of the sun. 
 
BACCALAUREATE 269 
 
 You might fight against it, or you might 
 ignore it, but in the end College would 
 conquer you, " to have and to hold " al- 
 ways. Kate laughed out at the thought like 
 a little girl, then whispered, with an actual 
 blush, Molly's words : 
 
 " I just love old Vassar." 
 
PRINTED BY GEO. H. ELLIS 
 AT ^^z, CONGRESS STREET 
 BOSTON, FOR RICHARD 
 G. BADGER & CO., PUBLISHERS 
 BOSTON 
 
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 ,', 18 1937 
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 THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY