JANET stood at her window thoughtfully tapping her lips with her forefinger. The window looked out upon the bay, but Janet was not observant of the white sails melting into the horizon, nor of the line of misty shore opposite. She was not unperceptive; in fact she rather prided herself upon her love of the beautiful, but just now she was absorbed in a problem which was one of the many that had confronted her during the past few weeks. The day before, she had successfully settled the question of a portiere and a couch cover by suddenly remembering the two home-made spreads woven by her great-grandmother, which, in their unfaded glory of blue and red, lay for years packed away in a chest in the attic. Janet would never in the world have considered them if she had not sat behind Martha Summers the last time she went up to the city. Martha was never chary of her information, and had discoursed at length, in such tones as must be overheard, upon the beauties of an apartment just furnished by a newly-married friend of undoubted position and wealth.

"The sweetest thing you ever saw, my dear, so artistic and so unique. The dearest cozy corner, and the loveliest little library, and what do you suppose she has put up as a portiere? The quaintest old spread of her grandmother's, one of those worsted things, you know, all red and blue. She has two of them as heirlooms. Yes, really. One can't buy an heirloom, you see, and she has one between her sitting room and bedroom and another on a divan. I declare they look too sweet for anything. I am wild for some."

Having listened to all this, Janet could triumphantly drag forth the heavy spreads, and, after airing them, could have them packed away with the other belongings which were to go with her to her rooms at college.

"Even if I should rip open every pillow in the house, and take a handful of feathers out of each, it wouldn't be enough," she told herself. "Dear me, I never foresaw so many expenses." She opened a letter which she held, and scanned its contents.

"We'll simply have to have a lot of pillows for our divan, and some sort of cover, and we must have a portiere to hang between the two rooms. You can furnish those, Janet, and I will promise a chafing-dish and a samovar, a lamp, and a lot of pictures and ornaments," so the letter ran. Janet folded it with an air of finality.

"There is no use," she said. "I will simply have to do it when Ted takes all those expensive things, though, for that matter, feathers are expensive. Dear me, I'll have to bother mother again, and I told myself I wouldn't. She has all she can do to get my clothes ready. I will just put the case before her and see what she says. She is such a dear, and was so pleased about those spreads, though they were hers and not mine."

She ran from the room and went singing along the hall. "What is home without a mother?" she carolled in her clear young voice as she opened the door of the room where her mother and a seamstress were hard at work.

"Momsey, dear," she began, "there is one more thing, just one more I promise you. Ted says we've got to have sofa pillows. I suppose we could have a few made of excelsior, but it would be too cheap and common to have them all stuffed with that, but I don't know where in the world we are to get feathers unless we have goose for dinner every day till it's time for me to go."

"And what good would that do?" asked her mother. "As if you could use green feathers."

"Oh, dear, I never thought of that; they would have to be cured first, wouldn't they?" Janet sat down on a low chair and gazed absently at the pile of gingham breadths upon the floor beside her.

The seamstress, a thin flat-faced person with wisps of dun-colored hair sticking out from the careless twist at the back of her head, stopped to bite off her basting thread before she said: "The sleeves are all ready for the machine, Miss Janet. Will you take them?"

"Oh, I suppose so, Miss Rosy, though pillows are on my mind at present, and I may not stitch these evenly. If any one were to ask me just now which weighed the most, a pound of feathers or a pound of lead, I should say feathers; they weigh me down heavily enough."

Miss Roxy paused in her swift movements, needle in mid-air. "Your Aunt Minerva Gilpin has two or three feather beds," she said.

"But I don't want feather beds, you see," said Janet, turning half-way around and stopping the busy wheel of the machine. "It is pillows I want."

"There'd be enough in one of her beds to make all the pillows you'd want for a month of Sundays," returned Miss Roxy. "It's a job to be sure, but everybody except the old-fashioned folks like Miss Minerva is using up their feather beds that way. I've made over at least a dozen this last year."

"Then you could make over one for me, couldn't you? Good! I'll descend upon Aunt Minerva this very afternoon. It's the least she can do for the credit of the family to present me with a feather bed. I'll have to skirmish around for covers though. Here, Miss Roxy, take these; my interest in gingham frocks has completely vanished, and I am going to hunt through the piece bags for possible pillow covers."

She dropped the sleeves into Miss Roxy's lap and went gaily from the room to pull over the bags in the attic and to come down half an hour later with pieces bright and dull which might be converted into covers for her sofa pillows.

"There," she cried, throwing them down on the floor in a heap, "I think these will be enough. However will I get them all packed, mother?"

"The easiest way will be to put them in a barrel."

"And they'll think I am going to set up a grocery shop. Oh, me!" She clasped her knees, and looked off dreamily.

"Come, come, child," chided her mother, when five minutes had passed, "you'll never get ready if you sit there dreaming the time away. If you expect this sewing to get done you will have to lend a hand."

"Yes, and there are those pillows," put in Miss Roxy. "That will be no small job, I tell you. I got so sick of the last that I made up my mind I'd do no more for anybody, and I wouldn't do it for another soul, for it certainly does make a mess about, and you feel as if you were breathing feathers for a week afterward."

"Dear me," said Janet, jumping up and attacking the breadths of gingham, "I am afraid I am a lot of bother, but one goes to college only once in a lifetime and it is really more important than getting married, for one can marry more than once, and one doesn't go to college so often. How do these gores go, Miss Roxy? I'll be good, mother, and work hard, for it is a shame to keep you cooped up here. I hope I haven't made a mistake in taking Edna for a roommate, for it seems to me my very modest array of necessities are mounting up into a tremendous list of requirements. The sofa pillows are the last straw."

"Are you going to make them of straw?" inquired Janet's small brother, Dicky, putting his head into the room. "I know where to get some."

"Of course not, silly," said Janet. "What are you doing here, anyhow? I told you to keep out of the way and not bother mother."

"I don't have to," replied Dicky. "I've as much right to my mother as you have. Say, momsey, I've torn a hole in my trousers, and I can't go to town till they are mended unless I put on my best ones."

"Oh dear, Dicky, you are such a destructive child," Janet remarked. "It is a shame when mother is so busy to give her anything extra to do."

"Well, I'd like to know who it is that is keeping her busy. She's been sewing for you all week. If you're so particular, I'll bring them to you and you can mend them yourself."

Janet looked decidedly put out. "I'll do no such thing. When I am so up to my eyes in work I think it is very inconsiderate in you to say such things. Why you have to go to town anyhow, I don't see. Hooker can get the mail and do any errands that are necessary."

Dicky made a face at her and began to joggle the back of his mother's chair so that its occupant in self-defense said: "Oh, Janet, do let him go. I'd rather mend the trousers ten times over than have him around here bothering everybody. Go get them, Dicky, and put on your old ones till these are mended."

Dicky scrambled from the room in tumultuous boy fashion, returning in a moment with the unlucky trousers which were speedily mended and he was sent off forthwith.

"I wish I had gone, too," said Janet after watching the light wagon disappear down the lane. "I might have stopped at Aunt Minerva's and have had them pick me up on the way back. Never mind, I'll get this done and go there this afternoon."

She worked away with a will, saying little for the next hour. Her thoughts were busy with the future, for these were exciting times for Janet Ferguson. She had been prepared for college at a small boarding-school where life had not offered many sensations. One of her fellow students, who had been graduated at the same time as herself, was to enter college with her and would be her roommate. Edna Waite's circle of friends included a number who were college girls and these she had considered her authority in all matters. In consequence, every few days she dashed off a letter to Janet with some new item of information, and with some necessity added to the list which at first had seemed a sufficiently long one.

So now Janet was beginning to feel that the burden of her preparations would soon threaten to swallow up not only her every moment, but every penny which the resources of the family could furnish. Janet was also beginning to have misgivings. If difficulties arose thus early in her career what would happen later when all sorts of unexpected expenses might drain her pocketbook to the last penny of her allowance, for Edna discoursed at length upon the various directions in which, as college girls, they would be expected to make a showing.

She looked so serious, as she pulled out the basting threads from the hem of one of her frocks, that her mother said, in the absence of Miss Roxy in the kitchen: "Not homesick already, Janet?"

The girl smiled. "No, momsey, not that; I was only wondering if I should find it hard to get through on my allowance."

"You thought it ample when your father suggested it."

"Yes, I know, but Edna keeps adding some new expense to the list till I get fairly swamped in trying to figure it all out."

"Well, my dear, perhaps you will find that you will do better to establish your own standard rather than to accept Edna's. You will not have to do as any special girl prefers to do, but as you find all the girls must do. If you find there is really no need of every expenditure which Edna thinks necessary, simply lop that off, and go without it."

Janet did not reply, for experience at boarding-school had taught her that this was an easier proceeding in theory than in practice. However, her spirits were of an elastic quality, and she did not allow forebodings to trouble her long, and when she came back that afternoon from her Aunt Minerva's, a feather bed stuffed in behind her in the buggy, she was in such a state of hilarity that she could hardly manage her new possession.

"Dicky," she called. "Dick, come help me. This is the most elusive thing I ever got hold of. It is so yielding that when I pull it in one direction it heaves up in a great billow in the other. It is the most resistless thing for anything so seemingly responsive that I ever saw."

Seeing fun ahead, Dicky answered her call, and while she pushed, he pulled, till finally the feather bed rolled out and buried Dick under its unwieldy bulk.

The boy emerged laughing. "Whew!" he cried. "I didn't know feather beds were so heavy."

"It is over forty pounds' weight, Aunt Minerva was careful to tell me, and if I hadn't interrupted her, I think she would have informed me that feathers were—I don't know how much—a pound. But I was so voluble in my thanks, and so appreciative that she couldn't get a word in edgewise. Dicky, do you suppose we shall ever be able to get this into the house? Did you ever see anything act so? Just as if it were trying on purpose to get away from us. There, that's it—"

As Dicky gave a mighty tug and moved the bed a few feet, but the next minute, he lost his purchase and fell sprawling into its midst, amid shouts of laughter.

"We'll have to leave it," said Janet, with a long drawn sigh, plumping herself down by Dicky. "We'll wait till Stuart comes home and he will help us. Let's leave it, Dicky. I'm quite worn out with tugging. You can drive Dolly around to the stable and this can stay right here. Let us hope that no strangers will call this afternoon to see the family feather bed airing on the front porch. There are some advantages in living a distance from town; one can be independent."

She watched Dicky drive away with the buggy, but retained her seat in the middle of the feathers, till suddenly remembering that time was short, she sprang up and ran to the room where her mother and Miss Roxy still sat.

"I've got it," she exclaimed.

"Got what?" asked her mother.

"The feather bed. A great big fat one. It's down on the front porch. Where do you want it, Miss Roxy?"

"If it doesn't rain, it may as well stay where it is. I can begin on the pillows in the morning. I hope you remembered to get some new ticking."

"Yes, I did; a whole lot. I left it under the seat of the buggy, but I'll get it. How are you going to trim that waist, Miss Roxy?"

"With this lace." The seamstress laid strips of the trimming on the material and noted the effect with appreciative eye.

"Feather beds are very much like some people," said Janet, watching Miss Roxy's deft fingers.

"How do you make that out?" asked the needlewoman.

"Oh, they are lumpy and heavy and soft, and you think you can manage them till you try, and then you find they are so obstinate that you can't budge them, and if you insist on having them do your way, the first thing you know you are completely overwhelmed."

Miss Roxy laughed. "I reckon you are thinking of your Aunt Minerva. Was she hard to move?"

"No, she really wasn't to-day. You read my simile at once, didn't you, Miss Roxy? She is feather-beddy at times, but to-day she happened to be very amiable. I think my practical use of her feather bed appealed to her, though she didn't see how I could want such a raft of pillows," she said. "You are ready to have me try that on?"

She stood up while the seamstress, with her mouth bristling with pins, snipped here and pinched in there, till Janet sighed from the enforced position of standing still.

"Just the skirt measure now," said Miss Roxy. "Forty-two, no, I think we'd better say forty-three, Mrs. Ferguson." Miss Roxy looked up from her kneeling posture. "She's grown an inch, I do believe." She measured Janet's slim form, running her fingers along the tape measure. "Now you may go. I'm through with you for to-day. Suppose you get that ticking and measure off the pillows the size you want them, and stitch them up, so I can get to work at them first thing in the morning."

Janet obeyed and was soon clacking away at the machine, her cheek glowing and her soft hair curling around the nape of her neck as she grew warm from the exercise. "These are strenuous times," she remarked as she tossed the last square of ticking on a chair. "I will leave the covers till to-morrow. In a week—a week, momsey, I shall be ready to go. Please stop now. You've been driving ahead all day. I should think you would be thankful to see the last of me, for it means a little more rest for you. Now Stuart doesn't need half this fussing over. He gets his clothes at his tailor's, you see that his stockings have no holes in them, and there he is, while I am an eternal nuisance. Here, put that away. You'll go till you drop, and you won't drop till I go—that's a queer sort of sentence—anyhow, I'd rather go without that shirtwaist than have you make another buttonhole this day. Come, I want to talk to you."

She drew her mother from her chair and led her down to the porch where the feather bed still lay. "Let's turn our backs on fussinesses and go out to see if there are any peaches ripe on that tree by the hen-house. You know we always liked those better than any. Oh, dear momsey, it's going to be a long pull, isn't it? Four years of it before I can come home to stay. There'll be the holidays, though, and maybe I shall not be so very homesick between whiles. It will be fine to have Stuart within a couple of hours' ride of me. That counts for a great deal, doesn't it? I don't believe I could stand being so many miles away from everybody. It was very different at Oak Hill, where I could come home every Friday, for no matter how badly things went, there were always the Friday afternoons to think of, and by training oneself, it could be made to seem near even on Mondays."

She kept her arm around her mother's waist as she led her down the garden walk and through a little gate to the hen-house. There she released her hold and climbed on top of the building, feeling among the leaves for a ripe peach. "The best ones are always on top," she remarked. "Here are two beauties. Take them, mother." She crouched on the roof and held out the downy fruit, then clambered easily to the ground demanding her share of the spoils.

"It's a wonder Dicky didn't get them," she said, "but they were a little beyond his reach. Now come, let us go somewhere by ourselves and enjoy them like two nice complacent greedy-gluts. Don't you love to be that once in a while? One gets so tired of virtuously sharing all the good things, and I think it is really a necessary part of our development to indulge our appetites sometimes to the exclusion of our friends."

"That is a very Epicurean philosophy," returned her mother.

"Perhaps, but one should test all philosophies before settling down on any special one. Now, I know if you had your way, you'd save both of these peaches and give one to—let's see—Miss Roxy, and the other to father. I am just reveling in your not doing it. We will gorge ourselves and be wicked and selfish for once."

"On one peach apiece?" laughed her mother.

"Never mind, it is the principle of the thing which I am encouraging. If you do this to-day, maybe in time you will be shutting yourself up in the pantry and gobbling down all those delicious conserves you are so choice with. I'd love to think of your doing that while I am at college."

"Janet, you ridiculous child, what utter nonsense you do talk," said her mother. "One would suppose I lived the life of an anchorite and never allowed myself any luxuries."

"I know that it isn't exactly that way, but you are so exactly like the person who said somebody had to eat the drumsticks. You like white meat but you always refuse it, if you think any one else would like it. Dear oh me, I wonder if I shall ever develop such a self-sacrificing spirit. It doesn't look like it now, does it?"

"Appearances are sometimes deceitful," returned her mother with a smile.

"So cautious? Well, I don't deserve much encouragement yet, I admit. Finished your peach? Then I suppose we shall have to go in."

Another week saw Janet departing, her pillows stowed into a barrel and her trunks stuffed to overflowing with the paraphernalia which she had decided to take with her for her first year at college. Everything appeared very smart and sufficient, and she drove away complacently, feeling that there were no wants unfilled. She was also not ill pleased with herself, and felt the importance which is generally a part of a student's equipment when he or she first enters college. There came a rush of emotion when she bade her mother good-bye, but there were too many novel experiences facing her for her to remain long in a depressed or regretful mood, and she arrived in a tremor of excitement, a little shy, a little happy, wholly expectant.

[CHAPTER II]

POOR FRESH

JANET and her roommate viewed their room with much satisfaction after they had completed the arranging of their furnishings. Especially did Janet congratulate herself upon the lordly array of pillows which were disposed not only upon the divan but upon the floor. She felt in this direction that she had exceeded Edna's expectations, and the glow of conscious pride warmed her so that she could graciously credit Edna with having provided generously in the matter of ornament.

She stood with her head to one side viewing the "drapes" upon Edna's Morris chair, when some one banged on the door and, scarcely waiting for the "Come in" which followed the knock, entered with half a dozen girls attending.

"Oh, Janet!" cried the leader of the troop. "We've come to warn you to look out to-night; the sophs are after us. They are coming to-night for sure. Charity Shepherd overheard two of them saying something which gave her an inkling, so every one of us must lock her door early, and be on her guard. They caught Grace Breitner, and she won't tell what they did to her. She only laughs when we ask her."

"Oh, dear," exclaimed Edna Waite, "can't we keep them away, Cordelia?"

Cordelia Lodge, a bright-looking girl, with a way of squinting up her eyes when she laughed, smiled as she turned to the girl behind her. "Do you hear that, Lee? Can we keep them away?"

"We can try," replied Lee coming forward, "but the sophs are as inflexible as fate once they determine on a thing, and it's mighty hard to evade them."

"Well," remarked Janet, "we can do one thing; we can make it hot for them. I know what I shall do."

"What, Janet? Do tell!" said a chorus of voices.

But Janet shook her head. "No, I think it is up to each one of us to work out her own escape. We may look our doors, but if they are determined to get in, they may find a way of doing it, so the best thing for us to do is to prepare for their reception."

The girls looked at each other. "We'll prepare," they exclaimed.

"Come on, girls," cried Cordelia, "each to her lair, and a murrain on whoever backs out in her preparations."

"What do you intend to do?" asked Edna as the troop left, and Janet grabbed her hat pinning it upon her dark locks.

"I'm going to the drug store."

"What for?"

"I'll tell you when I come back." She was half-way down the corridor before Edna could ask another question.

And when she returned, she bore a roll of something and several small packages.

"What have you there?" asked Edna, all curiosity.

"This," said Janet unrolling her long package, "is fly-paper—tanglefoot, I believe it is called—warranted to catch the unwary. It is usually placed in infested places for the purpose of trapping intruders. A piece of this upon the window-sill over there, another on the floor in front of the door, wouldn't come amiss."

"But we are not troubled with flies, Janet. They surely are not a pest at this time of year. Gracious! I didn't know you were so particular."

Janet gave her a pitying glance. "Edna Waite, where is your perspicuity? I am not preparing for the common house-fly, the musca domestica, but for that variety known as the soph."

"Oh!" Edna's laugh showed that she understood. "What a scheme!"

"Before we go to bed," said Janet, "we shall complete our arrangements. In this small tin box is mustard. Did it ever occur to you that an adhesive mustard plaster would be a good thing? When one must have a mustard plaster, it might be well to manufacture a kind that cannot come off. I may get out a patent for this. Hand me the mucilage, please, and the scissors. This muslin is for the plasters, so is the mucilage, so is the mustard. You cut them this size; you spread them first with mucilage, and then you sprinkle them with mustard. I had thought of red pepper, but my humanity forbade my using that. There, these placed at judicious distances may be of use in case of an onslaught. Beware, Teddy, that you don't get up in the night and stumble into the pit we have digged for others."

"Dear me, I certainly will be careful. Oh, Janet, I almost hope they will come; it would be such fun to see them caught."

"I almost wish it myself," she replied, and when they had retired for the night, it was with much satisfaction that Janet thought of her traps.

About midnight, she awoke with a start. There was a noise outside her door. "What's that?" she exclaimed in a startled whisper. Then she realized what it probably was, and she called softly, "Teddy, Teddy."

"What?" came sleepily from the next room.

"Get up. No, don't. They are coming. Keep perfectly still and don't let yourself be seen unless I call you."

Edna, awaking to a realizing sense of the situation, did as she was bid, and kept as still as possible. Janet lay quietly and listened. Presently there was a scrambling at the transom, then by means of the electric light outside Janet saw a head and shoulders appear. She chuckled to herself as some one dropped lightly to the floor. There was a little suppressed squeal and a sound of some one groping about.

"What's the matter?" came a voice from the outside.

"Nothing," was the answer. "I'll open the door directly, if I can find the key."

Janet hid her laughing face in her pillow. It was a nice precaution not to leave the key in the door, for there would be further difficulties before it would be possible to find it. She made no sound, but waited further developments.

There was a further sound of stealthy footsteps in the room, and after a time an exclamation of "Gracious!"

Still Janet gave no sign of being awake. At last, however, the intruder reached the gas, and struck a light. Janet peeped at her from between nearly closed lids, saw her tear a sticky mass from one hand, and others from each foot, then, picking her way across the room, avoiding the bits of fly-paper laid in her way, she reached the bed, gave a spring and alighted fairly upon Janet.

"Here," she cried, "wake up. You must be one of the Seven Sleepers. Where is the key to the door?"

Janet opened her eyes drowsily, stretched her arms, and said, "Get off my chest, nightmare. I ate no mince-pie last night."

The girl snickered, but immediately assumed a severe manner. "Get up and get me that key," she said.

"What for?" asked Janet.

"So I can get out."

"I don't care whether you get out or not," returned Janet, "so long as you get off—my chest."

The girl perched there sat looking about the room. She was a tiny thing, with fluffy light hair about her elfish little face. "What's the sticky stuff all about here for?" she asked.

"Oh," replied Janet, "it's to catch flies—and things."

The girl drew down her mouth. "I'll not have you alluding to me as a thing, you Miss Fresh. Get up and get me that key, or I'll find a way to make you."

"Find it then!" returned Janet.

There came a tap at the door. "What's the matter, Fay?" asked a voice. "Why don't you come?"

"I'm coming," responded Fay. "Don't get impatient."

She looked at Janet, who grinned in response.

"I'm not going to be outdone by any poor fresh," said Fay. "You're entirely too smart. I am going to have that key."

She suddenly sprang from the bed, and before Janet could be aware of her intention, she had darted to the window-sill and returning, with one of Janet's own plasters, slapped it viciously upon her forehead. "There," she exclaimed, "you tell me where that key is."

In vain, Janet tried to free her hands to get at the plaster; she was at a disadvantage, for she was lying down with some one holding her and pressing her arms tightly to her sides. She bore herself bravely for a few minutes; then the mustard began to burn, and she called for help.

"Teddy, Teddy," she cried, "come take this thing off. A nightmare has possession of me."

Teddy came running to the rescue, but once, on the way, imprudently stepped on a bit of the fly-paper. She tore it off, and reached the bed where Janet, now really suffering from the mustard, was trying to struggle from her captor's grasp.

"Take it off, Teddy, quick," she cried; "the mustard is burning horribly."

Edna managed to remove the plaster which had stuck exceedingly fast and was not easy to get off, and then she threw herself upon the uninvited visitor who now met her Waterloo, for Janet, thus reinforced, was able to free herself and together she and Edna bound the hapless Fay and laid her upon her back on the bed.

Those outside were becoming more anxious. "Aren't you ever coming, Fay?" they asked.

"No, she isn't," replied Janet triumphantly. "We are going to keep her for company. She is so cunning, we are perfectly fascinated with her. She reminds us of our baby dolls. Go away like good girls, for you can't get in and she can't get out."

"Oh, won't I pay you back for this," said Fay, indignant that a sophomore should be thus worsted by her natural prey.

"Will you?" asked Janet pleasantly. "Now why should you want to pay us back for not allowing our room to be broken into? What do they call such a performance? I know it is some sort of crime. We will not prosecute you though, and you can tell those girls outside that you'll not go home till morning, till daylight doth appear. There is no use for them to wait."

Fay reluctantly notified her friends of her failure to carry out their plan, and they went off. It had been rather a trying experience for Fay, for in nearly every room, she had found some sort of trap set. Being the smallest and lightest in her class, as well as the cleverest in gymnastic feats, she had been chosen to defy locked doors and to climb over the transoms; then, before the occupants could be aware of her presence, to unlock the door from the inside and admit the waiting sophomores.

In one room, she had dropped directly into a tub of cold water when she let herself down from above; in another a pitfall in the shape of a long cord stretched from side to side of the room caused her to trip and fall; in a third there was such a barricade of chairs, tables and other furniture, that there was no getting behind the defense, and she was obliged to retreat. But only in the rooms occupied by Janet and Edna did she find the key gone from the door, and so she was lost. On the outside, she had been boosted up by her friends, and in this last instance, if she had been wise, she would have retreated by means of such help as a chair would furnish, and could have made her escape; but she was a little too venturesome, and was detained, in spite of all her prayers, till morning.

When Janet appeared the next day with a crimson blotch across her forehead, the only answer she made to the solicitous questions put to her was "Nightmare," but there was a general understanding that the freshmen had worsted the sophomores in this first attack.

The sophomores did not forget, however. They bided their time, and, like Brer Rabbit, they "lay low" till suspicions should be allayed, and then one triumphant night, they descended upon their sleeping victims. Fay having cleverly stolen the key of the room Janet occupied, was able to rush in with no fear of being unable to get out again. Behind her came a body of victorious sophs guarding half a dozen freshmen whom they had dragged from their beds.

"Shut the door, Fay," said the leader, Juliet Fuller; "we'll settle the business where you tell me the most rebellious of the class hold forth. You'll have to get up, Miss Ferguson; we can't allow you to entertain us in bed. You haven't a mustard plaster handy, have you, and what became of the fly-paper?"

"Oh, I suppose Fay Wingate carried it all off on her feet," returned Janet with an air of innocence.

Juliet frowned. "No base insinuations, if you please. What's in that jar? Candied ginger, as I live. Much better than mustard. Bring it here, Fay."

And Janet had the mortification of seeing her treasured ginger gobbled up before her eyes.

"Having refreshed ourselves through your generosity," remarked Juliet, "we will provide a little entertainment for the assembled company. First on the programme is Miss Charity Shepherd, who will give us an example of Yankee dialect. Miss Shepherd is remarkably clever in having preserved the exact intonation, and pronunciation, as you will presently hear. Step out, Miss Shepherd, and don't be afraid."

As Charity's accent was unmistakable, every one tittered.

Juliet selected a slip from several she held in her hand. "You are requested to give this selection, Miss Shepherd," she said, handing the paper to Charity. "Stand up if you please, and speak out clearly."

Deciding that discretion would be the better part of valor, Charity amiably complied, and read as follows, exactly as Juliet had foreseen that she would: "Take your caad and go to the caa where you will find the staatah whom you will know by the staa he wears. He will tell you the way to Haavahd. If there is doo on the grass, do not go that way, but consider it your dooty to take the other path to the institootion."

"Lovely," exclaimed Juliet as a titter ran around the room. "You may sit down, Miss Shepherd, and we will next hear from the lady from Philadelphia." She looked toward another of the girls who bit her lip, but did not respond. "You are from Philadelphia, aren't you, Miss Cox?" asked Juliet suavely.

"Yes," was the answer.

"And you live somewhere near North Broad Street, don't you?"

Adelaide Cox nodded.

"And your name is—?"

"Auddie Cox."

"To be sure. It would have to be Auddie, young ladies. Well, Miss Cox, you will not refuse to help us out in our little entertainment. With such men as John Wanamaker and George W. Childs as examples of public benefactors, you cannot refuse to help the cause of humanity. Will you not read these few lines as they do it in Philadelphia?" She handed her a paper, typewritten, which Addie took, blushed, but made no attempt to read.

"You must, you know," said Juliet mildly.

"You'd better," whispered Janet, who sat near the victim.

And Addie read: "One doy in Moy, I went daown taown, and while I was trying to open a hayumper, I cut me hayund with a hayutchet. I heard some one soy it wasn't the woy to do it."

"Delicious!" exclaimed Juliet. "I couldn't do that if I tried all night. Now, Cordelia, dear, we are going to let you off with a mere snatch, but we must make this as complete as we can that the effect may be more striking. This, Cordelia, dear."

Cordelia, laughing and squinting up her eyes, took the paper with a good grace. "I am perfectly willing," she said, and glibly rattled off:

"Puryulls may do for some, but give me diamonds, thutty or more puryfect ones, for I am the guryull from New York."

"It is the most interesting study in dialect, that we have ever had at this college," remarked Juliet. "We shall all be immensely benefited by it, for I want you to understand, young ladies, that these are living examples of how they do it in the various localities represented, and the examples have been imported at a great expenditure of time and strength. I think you will all agree that in the last one, we have reached the climax. Miss Lee Penrose, of Virginia, will now give us an example of true Virginny dialect."

Lee had no bashfulness, and was too proud of her native State to consider anything relating to it a matter of criticism, so she gaily took her paper, and told how she "opened the do' into the co't, and beyond it, saw a gyarden where were a lot of pretty gyurls who said we are sho' 'nough F. F. V.'s."

There was a lot more to it which Lee did not hesitate to give.

"Perfectly delightful," Juliet cried. "Now, Miss Penrose, that was so dead easy that you will have to supplement it by something else in character. What shall it be?"

"A break down? A double shuffle? I can do those," said Lee, quite ready for anything.

"Yes, yes," came from every part of the room.

"The amiable Miss Penrose in her unparalleled character dances," announced Juliet.

And Lee stepped out, fairly delighting them all by her agility and the intricacy of her steps, winding up with a cake walk which convulsed them all.

"You are a dear," cried Juliet. "You are worth the whole bunch. I just love you for being so ready to please us."

And Lee, having scored a hit, sat down breathless from her exertions.

"Janet Ferguson, you haven't done any stunt," said Juliet suddenly. "Come out here, you and your roommate. What is her name? Oh, thank you, Teddy Waite. We are not going to let you off too easy in spite of your crimsoned brow. Oh, yes, we did eat all their ginger, didn't we? Well, if they are good, and mind what we say, we won't be very hard on them. Let me see—What? Oh, thank you, Fay. Miss Ferguson, you will have to go out into the hall, and climb over your own door by way of the transom. This is what is called a reflective act, for it is to give you an appreciation of the difficulties we have had to endure, and will also give you some thing to reflect upon."

Now Janet was not very athletic. She had but just begun her work in the gymnasium, yet she could climb, thanks to her country training, and though she was awkward enough in crawling through the transom, she managed to scramble down without mishap. Edna was then requested to go through the same feat, and the sophomores then took their leave, expressing themselves as having been greatly entertained.

When they had gone, Janet threw herself into a chair and sighed with relief.

"It wasn't so bad as I was afraid it might be," she said. "Thank heaven, that's over; and I don't suppose there'll be any more of it." And there was not.

[CHAPTER III]

FRATERNITY GIRLS

SCARCELY had Janet become accustomed to her new surroundings, before she found herself the object of special attention from certain girls in the college, and she quite plumed herself upon being so popular with these students in the upper classes. She took pains, however, to hide her elation, for she had wit enough to discover that most of the freshmen were very well satisfied with themselves, and that it was the aim of the sophs to take them down, a wholesome discipline, to be sure, for the majority of them. Indeed, it was in talking to Rosalie Trent, a junior who had selected Janet for special attention, that she learned what was expected of the freshmen, and how far many of them failed in meeting the expectation.

"They know it all," exclaimed Rosalie. "I don't mean you, Janet dear, for even if you think yourself a star of the first magnitude you have sense enough to keep your opinions to yourself. But the consequential airs of some of the new girls actually put me in a temper. I met one of these important individuals waiting for the elevator awhile ago; Nell Deford was there, too; you know how we all regard Nell, and even if she were not a senior, we'd show her deference. Well, what does this little whipper-snapper do, but push herself into the elevator ahead of Nell."

"What did you do?" asked Janet, appalled at such an impertinence on the part of a freshman.

"I swept her back and said, 'Miss Deford first, if you please.' Then I stepped in after Nell, and let Miss Fresh enter last. I must say that she had the grace to look abashed. You see why we have to sit on such creatures once in awhile, or they would simply run the whole place. You are going to the tea with me, aren't you, Janet? Becky Burdett is a girl worth knowing."

"And she is a senior? I think it is lovely of her to want me to come, and I shall surely go."

"You will meet some of our nicest girls there, and Becky has a very pleasant home."

"I think it just dear of you to take me," said Janet gratefully. She was a little bewildered by Rosalie's evident desire to please her, and wondered why she should have so attracted her. It was after Rosalie left the room and Cordelia came in that she found out.

"I see Rosalie Trent is rushing you," she said.

"Why, what makes you think so?" asked Janet.

"Wasn't she just here, and haven't you been walking with her and meeting her after class to walk home with her?"

"Why, yes, I have sometimes."

"They say that it is a great compliment to be asked to join the fraternity that Nell Deford and Becky Burdett belong to, and you ought to feel flattered."

"Fraternity? Rosalie has never mentioned the word to me."

"Of course not. It would be the greatest breach of etiquette to think of doing that, and Rosalie would rather die than mention it to you; all the same she is rushing you, it is very plain to be seen. You didn't suppose she was showering her attentions upon you simply because she loved you for yourself alone, did you?"

"I didn't know. Some of the others have done the same."

"They are frat girls, too, and nothing is too much for a rushee."

"Well I think it is very nice to be a rushee. I like all this attention whether they want me in their fraternity or not. Any way you put it, it is a compliment, isn't it?"

"Yes, of course, for they are supposed to be very particular whom they ask. Shall you join that one, Janet, or any at all?"

"I don't know. I haven't thought much about it. Shall you?"

"No, I think not. I rather think I shall be a non-frat. It takes up such a lot of time and there are expenses for one thing and another, and I would rather spend my money some other way."

"But there are advantages," said Janet. "You meet a lot of nice girls, and you may make acquaintances that will be a pleasure and a benefit to you all your life."

"That is true, but I can get along without that, I think. Is Ted going to join?"

"I don't know. We haven't discussed it."

"What do you talk about, pray?"

"Oh, a thousand things. Heaven knows there is enough to talk about, isn't there?"

"Well, yes, if one wants to merely say words. It doesn't appear to me that there are many girls here worth holding a real conversation with."

"Another argument for a frat," said Janet. "You might meet a kindred soul, if you joined one," she continued, searching in her bureau drawer for a pair of light gloves. "There's Ted now! If you want to talk frats to her, you can do it, and I will ask to be excused while I complete my toilet, for I am going with Rosalie to the halls of the rich and the great."

Teddy and Cordelia soon left her, and she started off with Rosalie for the tea, which proved to be an occasion for a perfect ovation. Every girl present seemed to want to make herself as agreeable as she knew how, and lavished compliments upon Janet till she might well have become vain.

"I have wanted so much to meet you," said Becky Burdett. "Rosalie has been talking of Janet Ferguson till we all feel that not to know you is to have lost something. Nell Deford has been asking about you. Will you let me bring her over to talk to you?"

Would she let her? Janet was overwhelmed, for of all persons whom she desired to meet, the stately Miss Deford was the one; and when she found herself listening to pretty speeches from this paragon, she was in the seventh heaven of delight. That she, Janet Ferguson, a country girl, a freshman, with nothing special to recommend her, should be receiving friendly advances from the star of the senior class, who had written clever stories, who had an enviable record for brilliant work in more than one course, who was editor-in-chief of the college magazine, and who, altogether, was a person of importance—this was a privilege that Janet never expected to come her way.

She went home in a transport of delight. "I've had the loveliest time," she exclaimed as she drew off her gloves. "I wish you could have gone, Teddy. Just think, I met Nell Deford and Becky Burdett, and some of the loveliest girls, and they were so sweet to me. I think it is perfectly delicious to be rushed."

"One of the seniors invited me to go to a lecture with her," said Edna.

"Which one of the girls was it?"

"I forget her name, but she wears a hat trimmed with a centrepiece and a feather duster."

Janet laughed. "Oh, that's Theresa McGarvey. She is great fun. She had that hat on this afternoon, and she certainly looks like a guy, but she is so droll and so full of life, nobody cares how she looks. I hope you are going to accept her invitation, for if we join any frat it should be that one; the very nicest and brightest of the girls belong to it. How did you happen to meet Miss McGarvey?"

"She came up and spoke to me after Latin this morning. She asked if the nice fresh-looking girl with dark hair whom she saw so often with Rosalie Trent were not my roommate. I replied that she was. Then she asked your name and I told her. Then she asked if I had many friends here, and I said, yes, that I had numbers, that I believed I had as many as six; then she invited me to go to the lecture with her."

"Oh, I do hope she means to rush you, Ted. You don't know what fun it is. I must confess, however, that it plays havoc with one's outside plans, but Cordelia says they don't keep it up very long. I wish you could go to Miss Burdett's; she has such a lovely home. I noticed that she had several awfully good casts in her room. I mean to get some, a Barrye lion, I think, and one of those fascinating heads like hers."

"Has she a fascinating head? It didn't strike me so when you pointed her out to me in chapel."

"Goose, I mean her cast of a head, of course. Say, Teddy, don't forget that it is as much as your life's worth to mention the word frat to any of these girls. One of the freshmen didn't know she oughtn't to, and she asked one of the rushers when pledge day would be; they dropped her instantly, and she couldn't imagine why. We must never give them a suspicion of a hint that we know why they are nice to us. Cordelia told me all that. I don't know what we should do without Cordelia; she is so well posted, you know, because her sister was graduated here last year."

A knock at the door interrupted their talk, and Janet admitted a stylishly dressed girl who asked, "Isn't this Miss Ferguson?"

"Yes, I am Janet Ferguson," was the reply.

"My friend, Effie Chandler, told me to be sure to look you up," said the stranger as Janet ushered her into the room.

"Oh, then you must be Hester Reeves," said Janet. "Effie told me I should see you here. Do let me call Teddy. This is Effie's friend, Miss Reeves, Ted. It is nice to meet friends of your friends when you are away from home, isn't it?" she said turning to the visitor.

Hester smiled. "It is for me in this case. What lovely rooms you have. Aren't those portières the quaintest things. I always envy the girls who can have a sitting room and a bedroom, too."

"We like it so, though I do sleep in the sitting room," said Janet. "We thought it would be better to do that way, and then if one must sit up late studying, the other, who may not have to, can go to bed early and need not be disturbed. Are you in one of the dormitories, Miss Reeves?"

"No," was the answer, "I board outside. I tried Hopper Hall for two years and got tired of it, so this year I concluded to go to one of the boarding houses. It gives me a little more freedom, I find."

"Then if you have been here two years, you are a junior, aren't you?" said Edna. "Dear me, it seems a long time before we shall be in your shoes."

Hester laughed. "It always seems long at the start, but when I think that next year will be my last I cannot realize it, and begin to feel very regretful that the time is so short."

Then followed a lot of personal talk, and at length Hester invited both the girls to go to a matinée with her the next Saturday, and shortly took her leave.

"Well," said Janet, when the door had closed after their guest, "there is one girl who has no axe to grind, and who is going to be nice to us, Teddy. Do you like her?"

"Yes," returned she, "but I should say she was a person fond of her own way."

"Who isn't fond of it?" laughed Janet. "I'm sure I am."

For the next two weeks, Hester saw a great deal of the two girls and was constantly asking them out to dinner, to drive, to walk, and showered so many attentions on them, that they were convinced that she was really very fond of them. Then came pledge day, and both girls, who had decided to join the fraternity to which Becky Burdett, Nell Deford, and Rosalie Trent belonged, donned their pledge pins and came out ardent frat girls.

It was the same day that Janet came in to the room where Edna was hard at work over her daily theme.

"Weren't we to go somewhere this afternoon?" asked Janet.

"We were, but we are not," replied Edna without looking up. "There's a note there on the table from Hester Reeves asking us to excuse her from going to Mrs. Talbot's tea."

"That's funny," returned Janet. "I met Hester in the library just now and she barely spoke to me. What have we done, Ted?"

"I'm sure I don't know," responded Edna, looking puzzled. "I am quite sure I haven't made fun of any of her relations, and I did not monopolize her best young man at the reception the other night."

"I cannot plead guilty to either of those crimes, nor to having been anything but most amiable. It's sort of awkward, isn't it, Ted, to be treated as if you were guilty when you are in a state of conscious innocence? What are these?" She took up two notes lying on the table.

"Oh those? I suppose yours is the same as mine. I am glad we have settled on our fraternity."

Janet glanced at her note. "Ted," she exclaimed, "I do believe this accounts for it. Hester Reeves has been rushing us after all, and we silly-billies didn't see through it. We thought it was all for our own sweet sakes, or for the sake of Effie Chandler." She sat down and began to laugh.

"I wonder if that is it," said Edna after a moment's thought.

"I certainly believe it is."

"Well, I said she looked like a person who was bound to have her own way. I'll bet she is furious."

"Dear me, then let her be," said Janet. "We can't help it. I'd rather it were that, than something else, though I can't help laughing to think how we have been fooled, and how she has been, too, for that matter. I like the girls in our frat so much the best of any, and even if we hadn't pledged, I wouldn't change, would you?"

"Indeed, I would not," replied Edna. "We must not breathe a word of this to any of the other girls, though," she said, as she went back to her theme.

Their conjectures proved to be quite true, for from that time, Hester dropped them, and not only she but several others, who had been particularly agreeable to Janet and Edna in the interest of their fraternity, after this had no more attentions for them.

However, with their new friends, the girls were content, and felt that their fraternity privileges were very great, since it gave them an intimacy with those of the seniors whom it would have been difficult in any other way to meet.

It was to Becky Burdett's pretty home that the girls liked specially to go, for Becky was a city girl and could eschew boarding houses, dormitories and regulations, and was much sought after because of this, and because she was a thoroughly generous-hearted, loyal and lovable girl. She was friendly, too, with a number of the faculty, and visited Professor Newcomb's wife and Professor Satterthwaite's daughters, so that she seemed to the innocent little freshmen a person living within a charmed circle.

"Could you ever, ever imagine yourself on jocose terms with your professor of mathematics?" said Janet as the two girls settled down one afternoon for hard work. "I nearly have nervous prostration if I happen to come face to face with him on the street, and to sit at his right hand at table would finish me completely."

"Well, since you don't have to sit at his right hand," said Edna, "why these remarks?"

"I was thinking of something Becky Burdett told me; of a joke Mr. Satterthwaite told her, and I couldn't imagine his condescending to anything so light."

"My dear, he is but a man, and probably his wife finds him very human," returned Edna sagely. "I am not half so much afraid of him as of Miss Drake. She is so terribly dignified and stately that she freezes me to an icicle. Imagine kissing her, or having little quips with her. Gracious! I'd as soon try to tickle an iceberg or a polar bear."

"Who's a polar bear?" asked some one putting her head in at the door. "I knocked, but you didn't hear. I came to borrow some alcohol."

"Goodness, Lee, we haven't a drop," Janet told her. "What do you want with it?"

"Gwine mek a cup o' tea fo' Miss Meadows an' de gals," returned Lee; "by Miss Meadows meaning Miss Drake."

"Not Miss Drake, the instructor in Latin? We were just talking about her."

"It was not she whom you were calling a polar bear, was it?"

"Oh, but we said first an iceberg; she's so very dignified, you know."

Lee laughed. "Come in and have a cup of tea with us. Ted said you were going to Mrs. Talbot's tea or I would have asked you before."

"With Miss Drake there?" ejaculated both the girls.

"Why not?"

"She isn't really in your room, is she?"

"Of course she is. I've known her all my life."

"And you're not scared to death of her?"

"Of Tilly Drake, as mamma calls her? I see myself. You won't be either, though perhaps it is wise to allow you to retain a little wholesome fear. Let me tell you something: Tilly's dignity is all assumed. I'm letting you into a secret, mind. I believe in my heart of hearts that she is as much scared of the girls as they are of her, and so she takes refuge in the heavy dignity. You'd better come and see her. I know Charity Shepherd has some alcohol. It would be against her New England thrift to allow herself to be out of it, so I'll go there. If I tell her it is for Miss Drake, she will give it to me. Ordinarily one has to bind and gag her in order to get it, for she will not succumb to fair means. She'll let me have it for Miss Drake though."

The girls looked at each other as Lee danced out. "Shall we go?" said Janet. "I'm willing."

"I'll go if you will keep me in countenance," returned Edna. "If you see me frozen with fright, just chip in and keep the ball of conversation rolling. Fortunately it's just the next room, so if we make any dreadful breaks, we can run and look the door before Miss Drake can catch us."

Janet laughed. The idea of the dignified Miss Drake phasing them home was too absurd.

"My teeth are fairly chattering," said Edna in a whisper, as they reached Lee's door, "and just feel my hands, Janet."

"They're like ice. You poor thing, I believe you actually are rattled," Janet returned, and just then the door opened to admit them. "Here are two frightened doves, Miss Drake," said Lee. "Come up and meet the ogress, girls."

Miss Drake laughed. She looked very handsome and quite approachable as she sat there in her plumed hat, wearing a very feminine cloth skirt, and a white silk waist on which was pinned a bunch of violets. In the class-room, she dressed severely in a plain black gown with no ornaments at all, and the effect of the becoming hat and the soft lace at throat and wrists was to alter her appearance decidedly. She held out a welcoming hand to the girls. "I'm glad to meet you in this informal way," she said. "Do I really scare you?"

Edna sat down uneasily on the edge of a chair, but Janet was more confident. "I think I don't usually come from your class quite as stiff with fright as Ted does," she answered. "It usually takes me quite an hour to get her limbered up. Professor Satterthwaite is my Gorgon. When he turns those penetrating eyes of his upon me, I feel the blood slowly congealing in my veins, and can't for the life of me tell a theorem from a broomstick. I think I shall give up mathematics, if I live through this semester."

"I used to feel just that way about Professor Satterthwaite when I was a freshman," said Miss Drake, "so you have my warmest sympathies."

Edna settled herself a little more comfortably on her chair. "Dear me," she said, "was he ever your professor, Miss Drake?"

Miss Drake smiled. "Why yes, my dear. Back in the dark ages, some ten or twelve years ago he was."

Edna opened her eyes, yet it certainly was easier to imagine this Miss Drake as a college student less time ago than that, though the instructor who sternly conducted the Latin class—in which the freshman sat, might well have been a fellow student with Professor Satterthwaite, Edna reflected. She thawed out enough to say:

"It must be pleasant to come back and teach in the college where you were once a student."

"Yes, it is," returned Miss Drake with a twinkle in her eye, "except when my girls think me an iceberg."

Edna turned scarlet, and Janet turned indignantly on Lee. "I think that was horrid of you, Lee Penrose."

"What was horrid?" asked Lee innocently turning from her occupation of making tea.

"To tell Miss Drake that we called her an iceberg."

"Oh, but I didn't, did I, Miss Drake?" said Lee.

"No, really she did not. That was merely a haphazard hit. When the girls are scared, they always call me that, and so I guessed that you did," explained Miss Drake. "Come here, Miss Waite, and see how comfortable this divan is with three pillows at one's back."

Edna rather timidly came and sat by her, and felt her hand clasped in the soft warm one of the "iceberg" who smiled down at her and said, "Do I freeze you?"

"Not a bit," replied Edna taking courage.

"Here, Ted, give her a cup of tea," said Lee, and Edna, only too willing, jumped up to wait on the woman with whom she was now fast falling desperately in love. Her conquest was complete when, before she departed, Miss Drake divided her bunch of violets with her.

"She is simply adorable," said Teddy ecstatically when she and Janet had returned to their own room. "Oh, Janet, if she should ever kiss me, I should die of joy."

[CHAPTER IV]

THE INITIATION

"WHAT do you suppose they will do to us?" said Janet on the day when she and Edna expected to be initiated into their fraternity.

"I'm sure I don't know," returned Edna plaintively. "I hope it won't be very awful. Fay Wingate scared me nearly to death with her vague little hints and insinuations. I never know when to believe her."

Janet laughed. "What hundreds of other girls have stood, I think we can stand. None of the others seem to have been fatally injured by the process. What time did Rosalie and Fay tell us to be ready?"

"Before four," answered Edna nervously looking at her watch. "It is ten minutes before four now. I wish the bothersome thing was over, or I wish I had never promised to join. I suppose it is too late to back out now."

"For pity's sake, Ted, don't be such a baby," said Janet disgustedly. "Do brace up and act as if you weren't scared, even if you are. I wouldn't have any one suspect I was afraid for anything. Here they come. Do pull up your features and smile."

And by the time Edna could make some attempt at carrying a less lugubrious countenance, there was a knock at the door.

"Smile, girl, smile," said Janet fiercely, "though the Philistines be upon thee."

Edna gave a ghastly grin as Janet opened the door to admit Rosalie and Fay.

"Shall we blindfold them here?" asked Fay.

"I don't think there is any need to do that," returned Rosalie. "Are you ready, girls?"

"Yes," said Janet firmly.

"Yes," echoed Edna weakly.

"Come on, then," said Rosalie. She led the way to the street, where stood the Burdetts' carriage with the footman holding open the door.

Before leading the way down the steps, Rosalie paused, and whipped out a couple of silk handkerchiefs, with which she bound the eyes of both Janet and Edna. "You are not to speak to each other nor to any one else until you are spoken to, and then only in answer to direct questions," she charged them. "When you arrive at your destination, the footman will see that you are safely conducted indoors. There you are to wait till some one comes to speak to you and tell you what to do next."

Half laughing, half scared, the girls gropingly made their way into the carriage.

"You know where to go, James," said Fay to the coachman.

"Yes, miss," replied the man, touching his hat. Then the door slammed and they were driven away to the unknown.

After what seemed rather a long drive, the carriage stopped, and the door of it was opened by the footman, who said, "I will help you out, ladies."

He carefully guided first Janet then Edna up a long flight of steps, rang the bell and stood waiting for it to be answered.

"It's all right," they heard him say as some one opened to them. Then they were conducted across a tiled floor to a soft carpet and were made conscious of the odor of roses and the hush of a warm curtained room.

It was all very mysterious, but they imagined they must be in some private house. They heard the carriage roll away, and each clutched the other who sat beside her on a sofa. It was some comfort to feel the presence of a companion in misery.

Presently they heard the murmur of voices in what seemed a room beyond, then some one came forward.

"Well, young ladies," a voice addressed them, "was it Mrs. or Miss Austin you wished to see?"

"I—we—don't know," replied Janet helplessly.

"Humph!" There was a silence following the ejaculation. Evidently their interlocutor was puzzled. "I think, perhaps," he said hesitatingly, "you have made a mistake. No doubt you were going to Dr. Armitage for treatment. He lives on this same street a block further down."

No answer.

"A most remarkable state of things," said the gentleman. And they heard him move briskly away. His heavy tread indicated that he was stout, his voice that he was elderly. He must have been rather perturbed, for he called hastily: "Solomon, Solomon, go call Mr. Van. Tell him to come at once."

"INSANE, EVIDENTLY INSANE," SAID THE ELDERLY MAN.

It certainly was a strange situation, and the girls began to wonder what the outcome would be. They sat there in the still perfumed room, waiting the next development, which came presently.

"Most remarkable," they heard the old gentleman repeating as he went out to meet some one whose heels clicked upon the marble tiling of the hall. "Do come in, Van, and see what you make of it," they could hear him say.

Janet felt like giggling, but instead she squeezed Edna's arm. She felt almost certain that they were being regarded by a pair of strange men.

"Would you mind telling us," said a well-modulated and manly voice, "just whom you wish to see?"

"We'd like to, but I'm afraid we can't," answered Janet.

"Then can you tell me why you are here?"

"That's something that we are dying to find out," returned Janet. "We hoped you could tell us."

"Insane, evidently insane," said the throaty voice of the elderly man. "Van, you'd better call in an officer or a doctor or some one."

"Wait a minute," said the younger man. "They are apparently willing to answer questions and are very quiet. We'll risk it a little further."

"You probably know that you are in the house of Mr. and Mrs. Austin, don't you?" said the old gentleman.

"We don't know where we are," Edna told them.

"How did you get here?"

"In a carriage," Janet replied.

"Whose?" asked the young man.

"Miss Becky Burdett's."

"Ah-h?" There was satisfaction in the tones. "We all know Miss Becky, and—why yes, I begin to see daylight. Are you residents of the city?"

"No."

"Are you visiting Miss Becky?"

"No."

"Then perhaps she sent her carriage to take you to the oculist's. Are you from the Blind Asylum?"

Edna tittered and Janet laughed outright.

"No, we are not from there," replied the latter.

The young man regarded them with a puzzled look on his face which it would have amused them to see. There was some great mystery here, and his curiosity was aroused to such a pitch that he was determined to find out why these two well-dressed, nice looking girls should be in such an awkward position. He meditated upon the subject, then he suddenly remembered that Becky was a college girl, and his next leading question was, "Are you attending college?"

"Yes," the answer came promptly.

"And do you happen to be fraternity girls?" the question followed quickly.

Janet laughed. "Not quite yet," she answered.

The young man laughed too. "Just trot back to your paper, dad," he said. "It's all right, I'll bet a sixpence. I can manage this. My mother and sister have not come in yet," he addressed himself again to the girls, "or I am sure they would be delighted to receive any of Miss Becky's friends. As it is, I am inclined to think that there has been some mistake. Now, if you will allow me, I will call a carriage and conduct you to No. 136 East. This is No. 136 West, and I think it is very likely that the coachman made the mistake. If we find that you are not expected at this number East, I will see you safely to your home. Does the plan meet with your approval?"

"Entirely," said Janet. She wished that she might thank him, but she was pledged to answer only a direct question.

"You couldn't take off those bandages," said the young man. No reply.

"Could you be persuaded to take off those bandages?" he repeated, quick to understand the situation.

"No, we mustn't," Edna told him.

"Very well, I will not insist. Be perfectly easy, young ladies; I'll call the carriage at once, and will stop to explain your predicament to my father who is much concerned. I see he is watching us instead of reading his paper, and if you knew him, you would understand what that means."

Janet and Edna were burning to speak to each other, but kept strictly to the letter of their instructions, and would only giggle and squeeze each other's hands. The situation had proved more exciting than they had expected, and whatever the next act might be, this first certainly possessed the elements of an adventure. They waited tranquilly till the young man returned with the information that the carriage was in waiting, and if they were ready, he would be glad to escort them to their possible destination.

"If we are ready!" said Janet to herself, shaking with laughter. Her mirth was of the contagious kind, and the young man who established himself on the opposite seat of the carriage joined in.

"There's nothing like seeing the humorous side of a situation," he said. "I think this is a great lark. You see, I am a college man myself, and can appreciate these irregularities and complications. I shall have some fun with Miss Becky about this."

Janet immediately became grave. They had in no way violated the confidence reposed in them, but if this were to become commonly known; if the college boys were to get hold of it, Becky and her friends might blame the innocent causes of it.

The young man understood her embarrassment for he said gently: "Perhaps you would rather I didn't say anything about it. Would you rather I didn't?"

"Oh, yes, we would," returned Janet eagerly.

It was but a few minutes' drive to No. 136 East. At the window of the house stood the anxious Rosalie Trent who dashed to the door as soon as the carriage stopped. She met Mr. Austin coming up the steps, and stopped short in her surprise. "Mr. Austin," she exclaimed, "I—I thought—"

"You thought I was some one else? Are you looking for two wandering innocents, blindfolded and ignorant of where they were expected to go? If you are, I can assure you they are quite safe."

"Oh, where did you find them?" cried Rosalie. "They should have been here an hour ago, and we have been worried to death about them. Are they there?" She peered out at the carriage.

"They are there. Shall I bring them in? I can vouch for their being the most heroically non-committal young persons I ever had the fortune to meet. By the way, Miss Trent, who is the taller one with the dark hair?"

"I shall not tell you," said Rosalie, running down the steps.

"Don't you think I deserve to know?" said the young man following her.

"Sometime, maybe, but you wouldn't have the dear thing mortified by your knowledge at present, would you? Please don't talk of this, Mr. Austin."

"I promised the girl with the raven locks that I wouldn't," he said, "so you can trust me."

"Did she ask you not to?" said Rosalie.

"Not she. It was only by plying her with direct questions that we could get a word out of her. The old gentleman thought they were crazy, and was all for sending them to a lunatic asylum."

"Poor dears," murmured Rosalie, going swiftly to the carriage and opening the door. "I am so glad you've come, girls," she said, losing all attempt at being mysterious in her delight at seeing them safe. "We didn't know what had happened. Becky was just telephoning to inquire if the carriage had gone home and what the coachman had to report."

"Oh, may we speak to some one, just once?" asked Janet in eager, hurried tones.

"Why yes, under the circumstances you may," returned Rosalie. "I am sure it will be allowable. What did you want to say?"

"We must thank Mr. Austin," said Janet. "It would be dreadful not to when he has been so kind."

"Surely you must. I will answer for that," said Rosalie.

Then the three girls expressed their thanks as cordially as they could, and were assisted up the steps by their escort, the door closed behind them, and he drove away leaving them to face the mysteries of initiation.

When they emerged from their stay of three hours behind closed doors they were full-fledged frats. They were also something else, for they were able to pose as the heroines of an adventure. Not a girl in this inner circle but clamored for an account of their experiences while under the Austins' roof.

"What did you think of it?" asked Becky Burdett.

"We were surprised, of course," Janet acknowledged, "but then we expected to be surprised. We started out to meet surprises on the way, and we didn't know at first but that it was one of them. We thought it was all pre-arranged, and when Mr. Austin came in, we thought he belonged to the performers."

"Then when did you begin to suspect?"

"When he brought in his son and began to talk of sending us to a lunatic asylum."

The girls screamed with delight.

"But we calmed down when his son took the matter in hand. Oh, girls, but when he asked us if we were from the Blind Asylum, it was too much."

The girls broke out into a second roar of laughter.

"It is so funny," cried Fay rocking back and forth in glee. "Go on, Janet. What did you think we were up to?"

"We hadn't an idea. We couldn't believe you had enlisted your fathers and brothers in the cause, and we were puzzled to know why you sent us to a place where we were not expected, till Mr. Austin, (Van, his father called him), suggested that we had been left at the wrong house. He really was a second Sherlock Holmes in the way he ferreted out the truth."

"He is a college man himself, and knows the ways that are dark," Becky told them.

"Anyhow he is a gentleman," said Janet stoutly, "for he promised not to tell when I didn't even ask him not to."

"Couldn't he be a college man and a gentleman?" queried Fay.

"He might be," returned Janet doubtfully, to tease Fay who doted on the students of the neighboring university. "Oh, girls," she went on, "but we were good; we didn't ask a single question, neither did we speak to each other. That and one other thing were the hardest I ever had to do in all my life."

"What was the other thing?" asked Rosalie.

"Not to lift the bandage from my eyes to see what Mr. Van Austin looks like. I am paid up for all the untoward curiosity I ever showed in all my life, and for thousands of other things. To think of meeting a fascinating young man, and not being able to tell what he looks like, while he could only observe the tip of my nose and my mouth! It is tragic, absolutely tragic. You couldn't get up another situation like it if you were to try for a thousand years."

"We builded better than we knew," said Nell Deford. "Never mind, Janet, there are compensations. You and Teddy can assure yourselves that no other girls were ever initiated under just such circumstances."

"A poor consolation," sighed Janet. "For the rest of my life I shall be seeking a voice."

"Why must you do that?" said Fay. "When Becky and Rosalie both know him; nothing in the world would be easier than to bring about a meeting."

"Never!" cried Janet. "I hope he will never find out anything more about us, and all I want is merely to see him from a distance so I can wear his image in my heart."

"Indeed, then, I shall do better than that," spoke up Edna.

"What shall you do?" asked Janet, turning upon her. "If you get the better of me, Teddy Waite, I'll never forgive you. What are you going to do?"

"I'll tell you when I've done it," returned Teddy.

"If you don't, I'll drag it from you by slow torture," declared Janet. "Come along. I must get you to myself. The rest are ready to go. Yes, we'll be sure to come to the next frat meeting, Rosalie. Meantime, if Teddy does any dark and doubtful deed, you needn't expect to see her."

But at the end of three weeks, Edna confessed to her roommate that her best laid scheme had gone aglee, for though she had devised a plan by which she hoped to be able to catch a sight of the unknown Van Austin the plan had come to naught.

"For three mortal Sundays," she said plaintively, "I have started out early. The first I walked up and down that street till church time."

"Why, Teddy Waite."

"Yes, I did. I haunted the square where the Austins live; I really did."

"Well, what came of it?"

"The first Sunday, two ladies came out and went to church together."

"Why didn't you follow them to see where they went?"

"I did."

"And you found out?"

"Yes, they went to St. Stephen's."

"Well?"

"So the second Sunday, I went there."

"That was a bright move to make. Well, after that?"

"There were three persons in the pew: an elderly man—yes, I saw him," as Janet looked questioningly. "He looks exactly as we thought he did. Then there were his wife, a tall, fine-looking woman, and the daughter, about twenty-six or seven, I should think, nice looking and handsomely dressed; but I didn't go to that church to see them."

"Still it was some satisfaction," declared Janet. "I think I'll go there next Sunday. What about the third time?"

"Not a sign of any young man. I don't believe he goes to church."

"I'd hate to think that," said Janet. "Our hero would go, you know."

"Of course, but heroes don't always act as you would have them. I am going to give it up and trust to fate."

"If Becky thought we really wanted to see him, she would make a way."

"Yes, but we have said we didn't want her to."

"I know that, and I won't appear anxious now. No, we must leave it all to fate. It's much the best way," declared Janet. "Then there will be no responsibility about it, and it will be so much more romantic. I think however, we might go to St. Stephen's to church next Sunday."

[CHAPTER V]

THE FINALS

As the days went on, neither Janet nor Edna chanced to meet the unseen Mr. Van Austin. The other girls, partly to tease them and partly because the two declared they really wanted to keep up the mystery, would tell them nothing about their hero, and as the time drew near for the finals, they were too absorbed in making up for lost hours to think of anything but geometry and German, Greek and Latin, and other subjects more or less akin.

"I know I shall flunk in geometry; I just know it," wailed Janet who was huddled in one corner of the room one day with a pile of books beside her.

"Oh, Janet, don't talk that way," begged Edna. "It's bad enough for me to get rattled, but when you do, I am simply left without a leg to stand on. It isn't geometry that I am so worried over; it is Latin. If I flunk in that, I shall never hold up my head again."

"Well, Teddy Waite, if Miss Drake hasn't some commiseration for you after all the violets you have been lavishing upon her, I have my opinion of Miss Drake."

"Oh, Janet, don't talk so. She couldn't make an exception of me if she wanted to; and it is just because she is so adorable that I am so miserable about not doing well. Don't you understand?"

"If that's the case," said Janet, "I ought to pass a brilliant examination, for I don't adore Professor Satterthwaite. I'll pluck up courage, Ted, if the rule works that way. Use your mind as Charity Shepherd says. I believe Charity's half inclination toward Christian Science is what she is depending upon, for she is very cheerful."

"If we had studied as hard as Charity has, we might have the same reason for being cheerful," remarked Edna. "I think I will get her to go over this with me."

She whirled her books together and carried them out of the room, leaving Janet plodding over her geometry. She sat on the floor with her feet stretched out and her eyes fixed on the book before her. Once in a while, she would strike the page with her clenched fist, then she would seize a paper and pencil and scribble away for some minutes.

After a while some one tapped at the door, and Rosalie Trent entered, at first seeing no one. "Janet Ferguson," she cried, "where are you?"

"Here," answered Janet from her corner, giving a deep sigh and lifting her head.

"What are you doing over there?"

"Cramming for the finals. Geometry comes to-morrow, and I am in a blue funk over it. I truly am, Rosalie."

Her friend came and sat down near her, leaning forward with her chin in her hands. "Why, aren't you pretty good in math?" she asked.

"No,—oh, I don't know. I'm not good in anything. I'm 'a po' ign'ant creetur', as my old mammy used to say. My head whirls so that I don't know an equilateral triangle from a buzz-saw."

Rosalie looked at her with compassion. "I'll venture to say you haven't poked your nose out of doors this week, such beautiful weather as it is, too. How long have you been working this way?"

"Oh, I don't know," responded Janet wearily. "Since I was born, it seems to me. I can't remember ever having done anything else. Once in a former existence I have a dim consciousness of baying been free and happy, but that was eons ago."

"Well, if you don't stop this minute, and go out for a walk, you will be in the infirmary within twenty-four hours. What you need is fresh air and a relief from this steady strain," said Rosalie.

"Yes, doctor."

"And you'd better go right away without any delay."

"Yes, ma'am, I would go if I could. None would do it more gladly; but with the sword of Damocles banging over my head, how could I enjoy it or derive any benefit from it even if I could take the time, I should like to know."

"Oh, you could, and go you must. It's time we juniors were looking after our sister class in the direction of health, I think. You must take your exams, as a matter of course, but they are not a question of life and death. Just keep a pleasant thought in your mind, as they say when you go to have your photograph taken, and say to yourself: This time next week it will all be over, and this time two weeks I shall be at home."

"And then nothing matters much, does it?" said Janet. Then suddenly she realized all that going home meant, and the old familiar scenes arose before her: the long low house with its portico in front, the orchard, the tall trees bordering the lane, the flashing blue water of the bay, the familiar forms moving about the house and grounds, Dicky whistling, old Hooker singing a camp-meeting hymn, Eliza in the kitchen, Ginny in the house. Up-stairs watching, waiting, longing for her, her mother, her face full of joy at the thought of her home coming. She sprang suddenly to her feet.

"I will go to walk," she cried. "Nothing makes the slightest difference once one is at home. Come quick, Rosalie, before I am seized again by the giant math." She snatched up her hat and the two sallied forth.

"You've saved my life," Janet said, taking a long breath as she stepped out into the sunshine. "Isn't it a blessing to have a home? Two weeks and all this will be a dream. We can shake off all the terrors and horrors of flunks and funks and thunks and go scot free till next fall."

"Yes, it is a comfort," returned Rosalie with a little sigh, "yet I shall be sorry to have my college days over when the day comes for me to say good-bye to my alma mater."

"I suppose I shall feel that way too, at the end of four years," said Janet. "Gracious, Rosalie, there comes Professor Satterthwaite. Oh, dear, why did he have to come this way just when I was trying to forget him? I will have to run, or I am lost."

"You'll do no such thing," said Rosalie, grasping her firmly. "Miss Drake is with him, and she saw us. She will think we are trying to avoid her."

"But you can explain. Say anything, that I have a sudden nose-bleed, or that I—oh, anything. Do let me go, Rosalie."

"I'll do no such thing," declared Rosalie continuing to hold her in a tight grasp, though Janet struggled to get away, till confused and not in a very good humor, she was compelled to stand still and face the approaching pair.

Miss Drake greeted her cordially, but the professor fixed his keen eyes upon her as he shook hands with her.

"You're looking pale, Miss Ferguson," said Miss Drake. "Have you been ill?" Indeed, the dark circles around Janet's eyes and the pallor of her usually blooming cheeks, gave reason for the question.

"No," Rosalie answered for her, "she isn't really ill, but she soon will be, if she doesn't stop working herself to death. It is simply an attack of midnight oil, Miss Drake. I found her in the throes of a cram, and so I dragged her out, much against her will. She has been hard at it without cessation for days, and she will collapse utterly, if she doesn't take any fresh air."

Professor Satterthwaite shook his head. "That's wrong, Miss Ferguson. It doesn't do to burn the candle at both ends. What are you working at so specially hard?"

Rosalie laughed. "I wouldn't question her too closely, Mr. Satterthwaite; it might strike too near home."

Janet bit her lip to keep it from trembling, and the tears were very near her eyes as she looked down afraid to meet the professor's gaze.

"Why, my child," he said in such kindly tones as went to Janet's heart, "your work is not bad. I am sure there is no need of such desperate measures. I don't see any reason why you should not make a creditable examination."

Janet raised her eyes gratefully to meet a very gentle expression in the face which had always appeared so stern to her.

"There, there, my dear," he said, patting her shoulder kindly, "don't let yourself lose your courage. It is not going to be so difficult, I promise you. Keep her out in this fine air as long as you can, Miss Trent. There's nothing like fresh air and sunshine for flagging spirits." And he passed on with an encouraging smile.

"Oh!" Janet drew a long breath. "I wouldn't have missed that for a kingdom. To think that he smiled and called me 'my dear'! He is human after all."

"He is a perfect old dear when you once arouse his interest," said Rosalie. "That's why I was bound you shouldn't run away. I wanted him to get up a little interest in you. Now that you have seen his best side, I am sure it will come easier to you to-morrow."

"Of course it will. I shall not be afraid of the-man-with-the-stone-face any more. Thank you, Rosalie, for insisting upon my standing my ground. I find that college is much like the Pilgrim's Progress, for when you come face to face with the lions, they are no longer to be feared."

"It took me to the end of my freshman year to discover that, too," Rosalie told her. "Many of the things you mind very much this year will seem mere bagatelles next."

Therefore Janet went home comforted, and retailed her experience to Edna whom she persuaded to take some exercise in the open air. And though both girls sat up half the night, it was less of a tax upon their strength than it would have been if they had not bestirred themselves to take the dose of fresh air insisted upon by Dr. Rosalie Trent.

Nevertheless, it was a wan and trembling pair who gathered themselves together preparatory to the examinations. How Janet got through her ordeal in mathematics she never knew, but she declared it was because Professor Satterthwaite had told her she would, and because she kept saying to herself: "Two weeks from to-day I shall be at home, and then none of all this will matter at all."

"I think," she said to Edna as they walked home across the campus, "that I would like to go to bed and stay there forever."

But, with other examinations crowding close, and equally important matters looming up in the chain of days immediately ahead, anything like a halt was not to be thought of; and Janet, with the rest of the girls, found herself caught in a whirl of events which bore her along to Class Day, with Commencement Day just ahead. It gave her a great thrill to think of the latter. She would be a sophomore after that, no longer a freshman with perked up opinions and bewildered ideas.

She would come back another year with an exact knowledge of what college life was, and there would be other freshmen who would have to learn, as she had learned, things not taught in books, who would be bewildered, and would fight hard for their opinions. Nell Deford and Becky Burdett would have passed out "into the wide, wide world" with the other "grand old seniors," but Rosalie would be there still, herself a senior.

She was disturbed in her meditations by the rush of feet along the corridor, and the entering the room of a crowd of girls.

"Where are you, Janet?" cried Lee Penrose. "Gracious, girl, don't you know what time it is? You mustn't be mooning here. Have you forgotten that this is Class Day?"

Janet turned and looked over the group of faces grown familiar to her these past months. "I'm coming," she said. "I had finished college when you came in, but I suppose I must do it all over again." She perched her college cap upon her head and arranged the tassel carefully. "Doesn't it strike you all as pathetic?" she said, when she had adjusted it.

"Does what strike us as pathetic?" asked Lee. "What's the matter with you this morning, Janet?"

"Nothing, except that any change makes me pensive."

"Even small change?" asked Lee laughing at her own nonsense.

Janet was too serious to notice her. "Even the small change of altering the position of a tassel that you have worn in one way for nearly a year. After Commencement Day, I'll never be a freshman any more."

"I'll never see my Annie any more," chanted Lee. "Do stop all this sentimentality, Janet. I shall keep all my regrets and bewailings till I leave college for good. We can't wait while you gather all your tears in a bottle, and if you are going to stand there all day and apostrophize that old tassel, we will not wait for you."

Janet came back to solid facts, and they all crowded out into the corridor and down the stairs, chattering, laughing, whispering, singing, out into the summer sunshine and across the campus, their class flag floating before them. At the chapel door they gathered in a body to give their class yell, and then they filed in.

It made Janet feel cold "all down her spine," she told Teddy afterward, when she saw the sophomores ranged each side the entrance, lifting their caps and forming an arch under which the seniors walked. It was like some triumphal procession of which she was part and parcel. She belonged to Class Day. All those exercises, of which she had so often read, were being carried out because she and others like her made up a grand whole without which there could be no college. She looked around at the sea of faces, and for the first time in her life felt the seriousness of the thought that each individual is responsible for its class, whether it be at college or elsewhere. Then came the opening prayer, and she entered, heart and soul, into the day's proceedings.

Commencement Day was less impressive to her, for her one great interest lay in the act of changing the place of the college cap so that its position would mean that the wearer had taken a step upward, and that henceforth Janet Ferguson would no longer be known as a freshman.

The next excitement was the packing, and the departure for home. Becky Burdett she would see again at frat meetings and elsewhere, but Nell Deford would step out into the past and become a memory. Janet's lips trembled as she kissed Nell good-bye, and more than one girl wept over her. Then came other partings, gay ones, and those full of the promise of meeting in a few months. Edna was to spend part of her summer at Janet's home, and Rosalie exacted a few days from them both before they should settle down in their rooms in the fall.

Of the rest, some traveled southward part of the way with Janet, and others stood upon the platform to see them off, their college yell being the last sound that was drowned by the shriek of the locomotive. So Janet traveled on; and as the scenes grew more and more familiar, her thoughts and desires were all flying ahead of her, to meet her as facts on the threshold of the home she had left nearly nine months before.

[CHAPTER VI]

IN THE GYM

MOST of the sophomore class had gathered in the gymnasium one afternoon not long after Janet had returned to college. Nearly all of the former students had come back, the only ones who had dropped out being Addie Cox and Kathie Steele.

Janet was squirming through a series of square openings, Edna was exercising upon the horizontal bar, while Lee Penrose was lightly vaulting over the "horse." The enthusiasm of the girls was always noticeable when the year was new, for not only did they enjoy revisiting their old haunts, but most of them found it not unpleasant, in their early pride of being sophomores, to display to the freshmen their familiarity with the various institutions of the college.

Janet had squirmed through her fourth hole when looking below she saw two girls in street attire enter. They stood near the door for a moment looking at the feats of the girls who were exercising. Presently Cordelia caught sight of them.

"What are those freshmen doing here?" she said. "Why have they the audacity to come without their gym suits? Come down, Janet; we've got to discipline those young women."

Janet, who was swinging her feet from the square frame in which she sat, climbed down and ran to where Cordelia, Edna, and Lee were whispering together. "Who are they?" she asked.

"Blest if I know," returned Cordelia. "Some audacious freshes, of course, who must be taught their place. Come, let us go show them their duty."

The four girls advanced to where the two visitors stood. "Young ladies," said Cordelia, addressing them in mild but firm tones, "it is against our rules for you to appear here in your street costumes. We can't have it. Get yourselves undressed as quickly as possible, and put on your gym suits."

The taller of the two girls laughed, and responded: "We haven't any suits with us."

"Very well, that need not worry you," said Cordelia. "Ted, get a couple of suits from somewhere. Lil Forsyth isn't here to-day, neither is Mary Alston; get theirs."

Teddy sought out the suits and brought them over, while Janet, Cordelia, and Lee stood over the girls and saw that they laid aside their clothing, the rest of the class crowding around and enjoying the situation.

"Get into these quick," said Cordelia; "we can't have any loitering." The girls struggled into the suits in a half amused, half embarrassed way.

"Now," said Cordelia, "you must exercise till we think you have done the amount that is good for you. First lie down flat on your backs, then sit up without bending your knees. Keep your arms flat to your sides, or fold them across your chests. Here, I'll show you how. Try again."

The two girls made the effort with no very good success.

"You'd better be taken separately," said Cordelia. "Here, Janet, you see that the little one goes through her stunts, and we will see to the other."

Nothing loath, Janet took her victim in hand, but passed her along to whoever chose to suggest a special form of exercise. One made her jump about the floor like a frog; another ordered her to swing from the horizontal bar; while a third set her to climbing up a rope hand over hand. Cordelia, meanwhile, with a posse of assistants, directed the movements of the taller of the two girls.

Half an hour passed when Janet's charge began to show signs of rebellion. "I can't squirm through these holes," she declared, "and I'm not going to try."

"Oh, yes, you are; you'll have to," said Janet pleasantly. "You don't suppose, my little dear, that freshmen can do exactly as they choose in this college. Don't you know that we are the sophomore class?"

"I don't know anything about it," returned the girl sulkily. "I'm not a freshman, so why should I care what you are."

"Tell that to the marines," said Janet. "We are up to all your tricks, my young lady, and that doesn't go at all. What would you be but a freshman? Don't you suppose we know the members of our own class? And I know you are not a junior. Perhaps you will insist that you are a senior. That would be what one might expect, I suppose."

"No, I don't insist upon that," said the girl.

"You don't really? May I ask your name?"

The girl was silent.

"Oh well, any name will do to call you by," Janet went on. "Suppose we say that you are Miss Mute, Miss Silence Mute. Now, Miss Mute, you'll have to go through this exercise. Up with you."

The girl struggled as Janet charged upon her, but was forced to the side of the room to which she objected to go.

"Boost her up, Ted," cried Janet. "What will become of you, Miss Mute, if you defy authority in this way at the very beginning of your college career? There you go. Hand over hand is the way. Now then, into the first square."

The girl managed to get this far, and sat mutinously swinging her feet, but refusing to go through any further performance. "I am no college girl," she declared, looking down from her perch. "I live in town, and just came here for fun."

"Don't believe a word of it," said Janet. "We will not have any hashed up excuse like that. You've got to go through all those holes before you come down."

With a row of determined girls below her, the victim saw no means of escape. She must either do as she was commanded, or stay where she was in rather an uncomfortable position.

"It's a shame to treat us so," she cried. "I think it is barbarous."

"Now don't get excited, my child," said Janet suavely. "It isn't becoming."

In vain, did Miss Mute protest that they had no right to detain her; the row of girls below simply jeered at her. In vain, she appealed to their humanity; they charged her with obstinacy, and at last, in desperation, she awkwardly and angrily obeyed their order, all the time insisting that it was an outrage.

Cordelia's pupil did a little better, and was willing to keep up the spirit of the thing longer; expressed herself as entirely ready to swing from a bar, to vault over a rope, and to do most of the things insisted upon, but even she at last pleaded fatigue. She had come only to see what it looked like anyhow, and it was not right to keep her there against her will. She wanted to go home.

"She wants to go home," said Edna in a mocking voice. "And where is home, little girl? Did you get lost, and do the naughty sophomores tease you so you want to run tell mamma? Poor little fresh, I am afraid you can't go to mamma just yet. She is too far-away, baby. Now, be a good child, and do as you are bidden. It's not pretty to stand there and look sullen. By the way, you haven't told us your name. Your little playmate appears to rejoice under the name of Miss Mute, though her name ill fits her after her tirade from her lofty perch. We will try to give you a more fitting cognomen, if you do not care to divulge your identity."

"I'm not afraid to tell my name," said the girl with a little fling of her head. "I am Marian Austin, and if you want to know any more about me you can ask my uncle, Mr. Courtney Austin, 136 East River Street."

"Gracious!" Edna looked around at Janet. "Come here, Janet," she said. "Listen to what this young person says. She tells me that she is a niece of Mr. Courtney Austin, of River Street. What do you think of that?"

Janet looked dumbfounded. "Is she guying us, do you suppose?" she asked.

"No, I am not," replied the girl. "This has gone far enough. It was funny at first, and we were perfectly willing to carry on the joke, but it has ceased to be funny, and we'll thank you to let us go. I am a stranger in the city—"

"As a matter of fact," murmured Janet, "we are all strangers. I am afraid that isn't any argument."

The girl paid no attention to the interruption. "I am visiting at my uncle's," she said, "and this afternoon one of my friends and I went out for a walk, and we thought it would be fun to look in here and see what was going on; then when you proposed that we should do some of those things we thought it would be a good joke, but we are tired out now, and you've no right to keep us here any longer."

"The question of whether we have the right is still an open one," said Cordelia.

"You know you haven't the slightest right. It's all very well for you sophomores to haze your freshmen, and make them do as you choose, but you have no claim on us. It is an outrage, and if you don't let us go this minute, I shall tell my uncle, and he will be furious. He will report you to the faculty, and we shall see if something can't be done to put a stop to such doings."

"Whew!" cried Cordelia. "Little girl's getting mad. Shall we let them go, girls? We'll put it to vote. All in favor say, Aye." There was a chorus of ayes.

"All not in favor, No."

There followed an equally decided chorus of noes.

"We can never tell that way," said Cordelia; "we'll have to have you hold up your hands. Hands up, ayes. One, two, three," she counted the uplifted hands of those voting aye; then by making her count of the noes found that there was a tie. "Somebody will have to reconsider," she said. "How about you, Janet Ferguson?"

"They are tired, and I think they ought to be allowed to go," said Janet. "I can't take back my aye."

"And you, Teddy Waite?"

"I agree with Janet."

"So loyal? What have you to say, Lee Penrose? Will you change your vote?"

"Not I. I'm not to be corrupted. 'No,' I said, and 'no' I shall continue to say."

"Charity Shepherd? Oh, I know your Puritan conscience would not let you commit yourself. You didn't vote at all. Then I suppose I shall have to be umpire. I say we make them do one more stunt and then let them go."

"Yes, yes," went up a shout.

"Then, Miss Marian Austin—a pretty name by the way; I don't wonder that you selected it—we'll let you two off when you hang by your toes from that bar."

"Oh no, that's too hard," objected Janet. "They might fall and hurt themselves badly, Cordelia. I don't see why you want to insist upon their staying."

"Thank you," said Miss Austin. "I am glad we have one friend at court in our extremity, Miss Ferguson. Oh you needn't look surprised. I remember your names, and if I should have to complain to my uncle—"

"Dear me," interrupted Teddy hastily, "don't make them stay, Cordelia."

"I have said." Cordelia made the statement grandly. "We are not going to retreat from the stand we have taken; whatever 1904 is, she is not cowardly."

"Hear, hear," arose accompanied by a soft clapping of hands from the class.

"But," continued Cordelia, "I am willing to compromise by giving them something dead easy. Don't you believe you could skin the cat, Miss Austin?"

"No, that is too hard," protested Janet. "I don't call that dead easy."

After some parley, it was agreed that if each of the two girls would turn a somersault she might be excused. They did it with not very good grace, and then donned their street clothes.

"I don't like you college girls one bit," said Marian Austin just as she reached the door, "and I hope I'll never see one of you again. There are only two of you who have any sort of claim to being anything but wild hoodlums, and they are Janet Ferguson and Teddy What's-her-name. Come, Trix."

And they whirled out with magnificent disdain.

"My!" cried Cordelia. "Wasn't she in a temper? I wonder if they really were telling the truth when they said they were city girls. If they are, we made great big geese of ourselves, and I don't wonder they are mad, even if they did come in where they had no business. But I still hae me doots as to their not being freshmen. We'll have to find out."

"If that girl was pretending, when she said her name was Marian Austin, she's a very good actress, that's all I've got to say," remarked Janet.

"I don't see how we'll ever find out if she did give a wrong name," said Lee. "We can't make it a business of personally interviewing every girl in the freshman class, and of finding out what each of them looks like."

Janet and Teddy looked at each other. They thought they knew a way of discovering if Marian Austin were really a myth or not.

To the next frat meeting, Janet went early. It happened to be at Becky Burdett's, and Janet saw her chance.

"Have you seen anything of your friends, the Austins?" she asked almost immediately.

Becky began to laugh. "I saw Van a few evenings ago. What have you girls been up to?"

"Then there is a Marian Austin," said Janet eagerly.

"There certainly is, and a pretty dance you led her. Van told me the whole story, and wanted to know if I thought the two blind girls, as he always calls you and Ted, were in the crowd. I didn't give him any satisfaction, for I couldn't, though I suspected that you were among the leaders. He said his cousin and Trix Venable were furious, and that they told his father, who was for starting right off to lay the matter before the dean, whom he knows very well; but Van interfered and told him it wouldn't be worth while, that you girls were only in fun and didn't really hurt anybody, and that Marian and Trix were to blame for going where they had no business to go. So the old gentleman calmed down, and Van talked his cousin over into persuading Mr. Austin to let the matter drop. Marian said there were two girls she'd hate to see suffer for it, and Van told her if any suffered all would have to, so that won her consent to keep it quiet."

"Did she say who the two girls were?" asked Janet thoughtfully.

"I don't know," said Becky. "He didn't remember the names, if she did. Do you know who they were, Janet?"

"The two blind girls, I am disposed to think." Becky laughed.

"What wouldn't Van give to know that."

"You won't tell him," said Janet in alarm.

"Not I." She began smiling, however, till her smile grew into a laugh.

"You're going to do some sly trick, Becky Burdett," exclaimed Janet.

"No, really, I am not," she replied. "I shall simply let matters take their course. There come some of the girls: I will talk to you later."

But later there was no opportunity, and Janet returned from the meeting with only the information that she had hoped to gain, and with no new facts about her now half-forgotten hero.

She hastened to Cordelia's room, which was the meeting place of half a dozen kindred spirits who gathered there under any pretext. Cordelia was deep in the mysteries of panuche, but looked up with a welcoming smile.

"Come right in," she said. "It's most done, and you shall have some. Doesn't it seem thick enough to you, Lee?"

Lee regarded the bubbling mass critically. "Just a wee, wee bit more cooking, I think," she pronounced her opinion. "What's the news, Janet? Where have you been?"

"To a fraternity meeting," returned Janet, tossing aside her hat and making herself comfortable in a big chair. "Girls, there is a Marian Austin."

"Ouch!" cried Cordelia. "Janet, you shouldn't make such startling announcements at critical moments. I nearly burnt myself."

"Have you seen her? How did you find out? What did she say?" came from different parts of the room.

"I didn't see her, but Becky Burdett knows the Austins well, and she told me. It was a narrow escape, I tell you, for she gave the whole thing away to her uncle just as she said she would, and he was furious."

"He hasn't reported us! Oh, Janet!"

"No, she persuaded him not to, though he was on the point of it."

"If ever I meet that girl, I shall be the meekest thing you ever saw," said Cordelia, putting the extinguisher over the wick of her alcohol lamp.

"I shall not," said Janet. "I shall be nice and polite, and shall act as if it were a mutual understanding that we considered it all a huge joke."

"Oh, yes, you, for she was quite decent about you, though you were as bad as any of us. It was just the saving clause of your not voting to have them stay when they wanted to go."

"I didn't see the need of carrying the war into Africa," replied Janet. "They had had enough, and really were tired out."

"Suppose they were, don't we get all tired out; and yet we have to go and go and go, and grind and grind and grind," said Lee in an aggrieved tone. "They are not worthy of any more consideration than we, and see how we are treated by the faculty."

Janet laughed. "The faculty indeed. You mean see how we treat ourselves. I am inclined to think that if we concentrated our minds upon our studies, we wouldn't have such a terrible amount of grinding to do. It is the frivolity of the outside world that tires us."

"Oh, me, what a virtuous remark from Janet Ferguson," cried Lee. "Do they make you have seasons of self-examination at fraternity meetings? A silent hour, for example, when you are supposed to be thinking of your sins and your frailties, and instead you spend the time in thinking how you will have your new hat made?"

Janet smiled. "What nonsense, Lee. I am not such an idiot as to begin posing for a saint. I was only defending the absent. My, but that smells good, Cordelia. Is it hard enough yet to eat?"

Cordelia tested her plate of candy by slipping a paper knife under the edge. "No, not quite," she replied. "I'll set it outside, and it will be cold in a minute. I've been thinking we might send a formal vote of thanks to Miss Austin for her consideration to the class of nineteen hundred and four."

"Do," exclaimed Lee. "I think that would be great. Come over here, Grace Breitner, and help us with the resolution. The president of the class proposes that we send a vote of thanks to Miss Marian Austin. Won't that be a lark? I'll bet she'll take it all right, all right. Don't you think so, Janet?"

"I believe she will," said Janet. "Let's draw up the resolution and get the class to approve it to-morrow."

They set themselves to work, and after a short time produced the following:

"Resolved, That the class of nineteen hundred and four extend a vote of thanks to Miss Marian Austin and to Miss Trix Venable for their consideration in accepting in a proper spirit the attentions of the above class upon a recent occasion which need not be mentioned, and furthermore for their kind offices in turning aside the wrath of an irate uncle."
[Signed.] "CORDELIA LODGE
"LEE PENROSE
"JANET FERGUSON
"EDNA WAITE
"GRACE BREITNER."

"We'll get the signatures of all those who were present," said Lee, "and we'll send it as sure as anything. I believe she is the kind of girl who will appreciate it."

The others agreed with her, and then they all dispersed to their different rooms.

[CHAPTER VII]

THE THANKSGIVING BOX

THAT Marian Austin appreciated the vote of thanks tendered her by the sophomores was evidenced by the arrival of a box of roses, corresponding in number to the list of names signed. A card requested that they be distributed to "the hazers" accompanied it.

The box was addressed to the president of the class, and when Cordelia opened it in her sanctum, an interested group standing by to watch her, she exclaimed, "Well, if this isn't heaping coals of fire on our heads, I don't know the meaning of the expression; red coals, too," she added, separating one crimson rose from the rest. "I'd like to meet that girl on an equal footing and tell her that she is—"

"Chief among ten thousand and altogether lovely," put in Lee. "I'm going to wear my rose."

"I know what Ted will do with hers," said Janet, accepting the rose which Cordelia held out to her. "You will see it when you go to Latin."

And that she was not wrong in her suspicion was apparent when the girls saw Edna's rose gracing a tall glass on Miss Drake's table.

Another suspicion to which she did not give voice arose in her mind. She wondered if the sending of the roses was entirely Miss Austin's idea, or if the "hero" had not something to do with it. He had begun to resume his place in her imagination since her recent talk with Becky Burdett, though Edna had long since ceased to adore at a distance, being now absorbed in collecting photographs of a certain tenor whom she had lately heard and who, she declared, was her ideal of all that was fascinating.

Not long after the episode of the roses, Janet came in one day to find a card of invitation from Becky Burdett.

"Going, Ted?" she asked, as she threw the card down on the table.

"No, I am afraid I can't," said Edna regretfully. "I've promised to spend the day with Kathie Steele. She asked me ever so long ago for the Thanksgiving holidays, but I had that engagement for the game and wanted to be home on Saturday, so I told her I would come on Friday and stay all night. Poor Kathie, she did so want to come back to college, and is dying to hear all about everybody and everything, so it would be inhuman not to go. She was so disappointed when the doctors told her that she must not think of returning this year."

"It is something of a trip for one day."

"Yes, but I shall start early and get back by noon Saturday. I certainly do hate to miss Becky's tea. I suppose you will see all the frats there."

"Yes, and a lot of other girls."

"Well, good luck go with you. By the way, Janet, Mike says there is a box for you, and he'll bring it up."

"Good!" cried Janet. "It's from home. Dear momsey, I know she has put a store of good things in it. Suppose there should be a roast turkey, Ted. I am going to see about it right away. I can't wait."

She skurried off, returning a few minutes later with the janitor who bore a large wooden box.

"Will I open it for yez, miss?" he asked.

"Indeed you will, Mike. Have you a hammer or something of that kind with you?"

"Have I?" Mike chuckled. "I'll not be thravelin' widout it these days whin the boxes do be cumin' in so stiddy."

Janet and Edna crouched down to watch the operation of opening the box, and when the last nail had been eased out, and the lid was lifted, they gave a sigh of satisfaction.

"I just want to gloat one minute before we unpack it," said Janet. "Doesn't it look moreish? Thank you, Mike. If there's a turkey, you shall have a drumstick."

Mike gathered himself together, slipped his hammer in his pocket and went out smiling. He was much interested in these boxes.

"I do hope nothing is broken," said Janet, carefully lifting the cloth which was neatly tucked around the sides. "Ah, mother has filled in the chinks with nuts and apples. These are my favorite apples. I know just the tree on which they grew. I can see Dicky down there gathering them. What's next? Oh, a lovely, a perfectly lovely chocolate cake. But Ted, the cloth around it is a little damp. I am afraid something has spilled. Yes, there is a bottle broken, a bottle of olives. Goodness, I hope the brine hasn't oozed over everything. Fortunately the cake was on top and the box can't have been tipped much from the looks of things."

"There is a turkey!" cried Teddy. "I see its legs sticking out."

"So there is, and it's a beauty. My, doesn't it look good? My mouth waters so that I can hardly wait to taste it. A lot of the little cakes, Ted, are soaked with the brine; that's too bad. Here is a glass of jelly, and what's this? Oh, my dear, it's some of mother's lovely conserves that she is so chary of. Here is a big tin can. Mother certainly does know how to pack, if the olive jar did get broken, for there is scarcely anything hurt. This, Ted, is a can of my dear Maryland biscuits, and a roll of home-made butter. There, I think that was a fine box. What a feast we will have with that turkey. I could eat some this blessed minute. Here, give me my penknife, the big blade, please. I am going to cut off some. Which will you have, a wing or a log?"

"I don't care."

"Then, if you don't care, I'll take the drumstick; it isn't considered so delicate, but there is more on it. We'll stow the rest of the things away, and the turkey we can put out on the window-sill to keep cool. Ted, to-morrow night we'll get the girls in and have a regular spread. Who isn't to be away?"

"Lee Penrose will be here, and Grace Breitner. Cordelia may or she may not. She is divided between her desire to see the game and her desire to see her family. Charity wouldn't forego her mother's pumpkin pie for all the games in Christendom, so she won't be here, and Fay Wingate is going, too."

"I hope Cordelia will stay; she always has the faculty of keeping away the blues on a holiday. Let's gather up the stuff, Ted, and get it out of sight. It's a shame about the little cakes. I hate to lose a morsel from that box, though I am thankful there is nothing else spoiled."

They tucked away the provisions, rolled the turkey in a paper and put it outside, and then went off together to Rosalie Trent's where they were invited to dinner.

The next day being a holiday, the pair concluded to sleep late, and take a bit of breakfast in their rooms. "A slice of cold turkey, a cup of coffee, and some home-made biscuits and butter will be all I could ask," said Janet with satisfaction as she slipped into her kimono. "I am going to air this room, Ted, for a few minutes, and come in there with you. I'll set the water boiling first, so we won't have to wait for our coffee."

She went to the window to raise it, and stood still in consternation. Then she laughed. "That's a pretty good joke, Ted," she said; "but it's up to you to produce that turkey before we have our breakfast."

"What are you talking about?" said Edna, putting her head in at the door of the room where Janet was. "What do I know about the turkey?"

"Oh, nothing, of course. I suppose you'll say Fay Wingate climbed in over the transom and stole it away for a joke."

"You don't mean to say it isn't here?"

"I mean to say just that."

"Janet Ferguson, I don't believe you. You are just trying to fool me."

"I am not, Teddy Waite. Please don't keep me in suspense. Don't you really know anything about it?"

Teddy came all the way into the room and looked around as if she expected to see the turkey suddenly appear from some out of the way place. "It beats me," she exclaimed. "We put it on the window-sill, didn't we? I didn't dream it, did I?"

"Dream it, nonsense. We put it there in our sober senses. We wrapped it up in paper and put it just there. If you really don't know anything about it, either it has fallen out or some one up-stairs has hooked it by letting down a line. They have done such things to the other girls."

"I don't believe any one could get it that way. In the first place the turkey was too heavy to be drawn up by any of the slight hooks and lines the girls sometimes use for that kind of trick, and then the window-sill is too broad; besides it was wrapped up. No, it wouldn't be easy to get hold of it from above. I think it has fallen out."

Both girls craned their necks over the sill and scanned the ground below. Not a vestige of the turkey was to be seen.

"Well, it's gone," said Janet. "That is all there is about it. No spread to-night."

"Oh, we don't have to give up the spread," said Edna. "What makes me mad is to think that some of those wretched freshmen are probably enjoying our turkey. You know it was rather windy last night, and anything as roly-poly as a turkey with a leg and wing gone, could easily roll off the sill. I am positive that is how it disappeared."

They drew in their heads, and were obliged to content themselves with a more frugal breakfast than they had planned, while the freshmen below gloried in their find and picked the turkey bones with a zest.

Becky's tea was quite an affair, and as it was one of the few social events to which Janet had been able to go during her sojourn in the town, she looked forward to it with some excitement. There had been numerous minor diversions—drives, luncheons, fraternity teas, and such like functions, but a big reception, at which would be gathered the fashionable set, was something as yet outside the experience of this college girl. She found Becky surrounded by her friends.

Rosalie Trent's was the only other familiar face to Janet. After a few words with Becky, she retired to the background and looked around the room. She was smiling to herself when Rosalie came over to her.

"What is the special funny thing?" she asked. "You can't hide that look of amusement, Janet, and you shall not keep it to yourself."

"I was just thinking," said Janet, "how it reminds me of a chorus of katydids, or some of those other insects we hear in summer time. Listen a minute. I don't believe we are a bit more intelligible to a higher race of invisible beings than the katydids are to us. Is there any sense to be detached from such incessant chatter?"

Rosalie laughed. "We are a part of it, and what we say to each other seems fairly intelligent. Perhaps the katydids' talk would be, too, if we could but understand it. There is some one here Becky wants you to meet. Just wait here and I'll see if I can bring her over."

She turned away, and presently piloted through the crowd a girl whose face Janet did not see till she heard Becky's voice saying: "Miss Marian Austin, Janet. I believe you two have met before."

Then with a nod, Becky stepped back to speak to some lately arrived guests, and Janet looked up to see Marian's laughing face.

"Come fill the cup, and in the fire of spring
Your winter garment of repentance fling,—"

She said gaily. "Each morn a thousand roses brings, you say."

"Yes, but where lives the rose of yesterday?" answered Janet quickly.

"Bright girl," said Marian. "You know your Rubaiyat, I see. What I meant was that we want you to go to the dining room with us and have a cup of something."

"I'll take my garment of repentance with me," said Janet. "Those roses of yesterday were very sweet, Miss Austin. It certainly was a very lovely way of paying us back."

"Don't thank me entirely for that idea," said Marian. "It was Cousin Van's. And you don't need any garment of repentance, for you really did stand up for me."

"Oh, but I was horrid at first."

"That was when you thought we were freshmen, and there was some excuse for that. Cousin Van said there was."

"What does Cousin Van know about it?" said Rosalie, who had heard the story.

"He knows all about it, of course," said Marian. "I've wanted to know you ever since that day," she said, turning again to Janet, "and when Miss Burdett invited me to this tea, I asked her if there would be a chance of meeting you. She thought there would be, and told me to come early so I would not miss you."

"Did you come alone?" asked Rosalie.

"Yes, for auntie couldn't come, and Cousin Minnie is away, you know. That is why I am staying on."

"Isn't your Cousin Van home for Thanksgiving?"

"No, indeed! He wouldn't miss the big football game for anything, so he has gone on to Philadelphia. We really don't see him very often, though he is so near. Auntie says she used to think when he went to college that he would come home for over Sunday at least twice a month, but if he comes once he does well. However, this is his last year, and then he'll have no excuse."

Janet listened interestedly. So this was the reason why "the hero" had not appeared at church. His college was not the university nearest, but one further away. She wondered which one, but she would not ask.

Marian continued the subject. "The next thing will be the glee club concerts, so I suppose we shall not see the young man for the next two or three weeks anyhow. I wish you girls would come over to see me. With neither Cousin Minnie nor Van at home, it is rather lonely sometimes. Of course, I enjoy uncle and auntie, but they have interests that are not mine. Trix Venable is about the only girl of my own age that I know very well in town, and she has gone South for the winter. Won't you come?" she asked wistfully, turning to Janet.

"I shall be delighted to," she said, thinking what an odd turn of affairs this was.

"I've been here an unconscionable time," said Marian setting down her chocolate cup, "but you see I have gained my object: I have met you, Miss Ferguson."

"I feel my garment of repentance weighing very heavily," returned Janet.

"Don't, please don't. It is all over, and really it wasn't a thing for us to have made such a fuss about. We were in the wrong, so let us say no more about it. Come soon, both of you. I suppose Friday is the best day for you. Shall we say next Friday afternoon?"

The two girls agreed, and she left them. Soon after this, Janet and Rosalie took their departure, but not before Becky had been able to ask, "Do you like Marian? Isn't she a dear, so sincere and unspoiled."

"She is lovely," returned Janet enthusiastically.

"Do you remember that you charged me with the intention of playing a trick on you?" said Becky.

"Yes, I do," said Janet.

"Well, this is the trick," returned Becky.

Janet felt rather lonely after she had entered her room and had laid away her wraps. Edna would not be home till the next day, and there was the long evening before her. A fine chance for work, she thought, but it was a holiday, and she had already given her morning hours to hard study.

"I'll hunt up somebody," she said to herself. "Maybe Cordelia has come in."

She tapped at Cordelia's door, and found that young person with her satellite, Lee Penrose.

"I hope I haven't interrupted any confidences," said Janet.

"No, indeed," Cordelia told her. "Come right in. We have been hoping that some of you others would turn up. Been out, Janet?"

"Yes, to a tea. Becky Burdett's, you know, and girls, who do you suppose was there?"

"Can't imagine. Any celebrity?"

"No, no one like that. Marian Austin, if you please, and she is just too dear for anything. I promised to go call on her next Friday."

"You did? Well, of all things," exclaimed Cordelia. "What did she say about the gym affair?"

"Oh, nothing. She wouldn't let me talk about it."

"Nice girl. Well, Janet, we have some news, too. Professor Gaines is going to Europe for his health, and in his place we are to have a new instructor, a young man, if you please, unmarried, rejoicing in the name of Mark Evans. What do you think of that?"

"I think that is startling. Have you seen him? What is he like? Where is he from?"

"I haven't seen him and I don't know where he is from; Boston, probably, or Maine; they turn out a great many from their factories there. I hope he is good-looking and not too shy."

"He is sure to be shy and not good-looking," declared Janet. "They wouldn't select any other kind. And he'll be hard as nails, because he'll be afraid we will try to take advantage of his youth and inexperience. I pity him, poor soul."

"Oh, you do? I pity us. That's just like you, Janet. You are always ready to pity anything from a mangy cat or a spider to an erudite professor. You'll find the one to be pitied is your precious self."

"Allee samee, I don't believe he'll find it an easy berth," persisted Janet.

"Well, I am sorry enough to give up Professor Gaines. He is such a well-meaning old soul, and one doesn't have to fight for every inch of the way in his class. I never heard him say a sarcastic thing in my life."

"I never heard Professor Satterthwaite say a sarcastic thing, but—" Janet paused tellingly.

"You may well say 'but.' He doesn't have to say, when he can look. He emphasizes the saying, 'actions speak louder than words.'"

"I have no doubt the new man will try to be sarcastic. They almost always do when they are young like that. We may be able to steel ourselves against weapons of that kind, but the ones who will be hurt are the ones who will begin by glorifying him, not we."

"Oh, no, not we," chimed in Lee. "We are so superior. We can always rise above any weakness. Don't be so dead sure, Janet Ferguson. You are just the one who will want to crawl under the chair some day in sheer mortification."

"You foolish child," replied Janet. "I'm not such a milksop as to care whether a man, especially a young man, makes sarcastic speeches or not. I'd rather he would. I think I'd enjoy them. I hate the meachin' kind. Come into my room, girls, and I will regale you upon olives and chocolate cake."

"Rare combination," said Lee.

"Stay here," said Cordelia, "and we'll make a rarebit."

And Janet stayed.

[CHAPTER VIII]

OFF THE TRACK

THERE was much curiosity on the part of all the girls to see what manner of man the new instructor would prove to be. That he was quiet and shy, a little awkward, not good-looking but with a fine intellectual face, they discovered at their first interview. Later on, Cordelia remarked that she had tested his powers of sarcasm and had not found them wanting. Janet announced that he was positively brilliant when he warmed up to a subject in which he was interested, and Lee declared that he had a voice that she would go out of her way to listen to.

"He certainly has the faculty of making one scare up an appearance of interest in all those dreadful chemical things in the laboratory," said Janet, "and I find myself possessed with a keenness in searching out possible results of ill-smelling experiments which I never supposed I could develop. I may make a brilliant record in chemistry yet, and astonish you all by the time I have concluded the course."

The others laughed. "You'll have to begin at once then," said Cordelia. "We have not been impressed by your brilliancy thus far."

As Janet was notoriously negligent in this special study, the remark was not without point.

"Just wait and see," returned Janet. "I'd begin now if I had not promised to go out to the golf club with Rosalie."

"What's going on? It's too cold to play golf."

"Nothing is going on, but Rosalie thought it would be rather nice and cozy to get a cup of tea there, and some of those good little cakes they serve. We can sit before that big open fire and swop stories, if we can't do anything else. Rosalie has not seen the new instructor, for example, for you know she wasn't here to-day. I can tell her all about him. I shall make him out such a piece of perfection that she'll be sorry she cut classes."

"Mark, the perfect man," said Lee with the absent expression her face always wore when she tried to be funny.

"That's good, Lee," said Cordelia. "Let us hope that it can also be said, 'the end of that man is peace.' I'm afraid it's not likely to be if he continues to instruct in this college."

"Why, how well you know your Bible," said Lee. "There's some excuse for my quotations when I am a clergyman's daughter, but I didn't expect it of you, Cordelia."

"I have a grandmother," said Cordelia concisely.

"Well," said Janet, gathering up her books, "I must go. If I happen to come across the perfect man, I'll tell him all the nice things you have been saying about him."

"Yes, we know how much you will," jeered Lee, returning to her books.

Janet sauntered through the corridor stopping, before she entered her room, to speak to one or two of the girls she knew, and tossed her books on the divan.

"I am going to take an afternoon off, Ted," she said. "I promised Rosalie I'd go out to Hilltop with her this afternoon. Marian Austin is going, too. Don't say anything about it."

"And why not?" asked Teddy, looking up from her work.

"Because they will canvas the thing and talk it threadbare, so I thought I wouldn't give them the chance. Rosalie and I are going to call on Marian first, and invite her to go to the club with us."

"Suppose you should encounter 'the hero.'"

"Oh, but I shall not, because he is off somewhere. I took good care to learn that fact before I promised to go. Anyhow, he wouldn't know me for he saw only the lower part of my face, and probably has forgotten how that looked by this time. However, I don't think I should have had the courage to go to that house again but for one thing."

"And what's that?"

"I couldn't resist the temptation of seeing how that room looks, after sitting there for nearly an hour."

"I must say that is a temptation," said Teddy appreciatively.

Janet settled her hat and went out. An hour later she was sitting placidly upon the sofa where, as a blindfolded freshman, she had sat with Teddy nearly a year before.

"It all sounds very familiar," she confided to Rosalie, "but I miss the roses. They have carnations to-day instead."

Then Marian appeared, and the call resolved itself into a commonplace incident.

Marian enthusiastically accepted the invitation to visit Hilltop. "I have been dying to go there," she said, "but something has always prevented."

"It's the dearest place," Janet told her. "It is right on top of a hill, with such a lovely view of the surrounding country from the windows. I hope you don't mind a little walk, for it is beyond the terminus of the car line."

"I love to walk," said Marian, nothing daunted.

"We can have a cup of tea and a little chat before it gets dark," said Rosalie, "but we must start at once."

They went forth, and within the hour were trudging across the fields and up the hill toward the club house, a picturesque low building surrounded by porches, and facing west.

"It is later than I thought," said Rosalie with a glance at the gray sky. "It is cloudy, and the afternoons are short enough on a bright day."

There were but few in the big low-celled room where a great fire was burning in the huge fireplace, and the three girls seated themselves where they could watch the dancing flames, sip their tea, and eat their cakes. A big collie dog made friends with them and, while they enjoyed their tea, sat on his haunches with his nose in Janet's lap and his soft eyes fixed upon her face.

"That's just the way with Janet," said Rosalie; "all the dumb creatures immediately know by instinct when she is around and come shying up to her. They know who is fond of them. She stops to pet every dissipated old cat she sees on the streets, and every stray dog in the neighborhood follows her home and sits howling after her on the steps of Hopper Hall till the janitor drives him away."

Janet laughed. "It isn't quite so bad as that, though I do like beasties, don't I, doggie?" She patted the collie's silky head, and he responded by laying his paw in her lap.

They lingered till nearly every one had gone, and then started forth to find it darker than they supposed, and the way rather difficult with bunkers and wires in the path. But they reached the terminus in time to see the light of an approaching car bearing down toward them.

"Just in time," said Rosalie cheerfully. "We shall get back in comfortable time for dinner."

The car came on with a rush, down grade, but with such force as to cause it to go scudding off the track some yards beyond.

"There!" exclaimed the conductor, "we're in for it."

"Why, what's the matter?" inquired the girls, crowding up.

"Broken the switch. Have to send back for a wrecking car."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Rosalie. "How long will it take?"

"Oh an hour or two before we get it all right again," said the man, watching the form of the motorman who was putting off down the road as fast as he could travel.

The girls looked at each other; and, in spite of the dimness, each could read consternation on the faces of the others.

"We might walk," suggested Marian.

"It is too dark and too far," returned Rosalie. She turned to the conductor again. "Is there any one around who could go up to the club and telephone for us?"

"I would," said the man, "but I can't leave this here car."

Rosalie looked back over the way they had just come; it seemed very dark, and a long distance to the lights twinkling from the club house.

"There's a young man inside," said the conductor; "maybe he'd go to accommodate you."

Rosalie gathered up her skirts and entered the car. By the glow of the little stove that heated it, she saw the figure of a young man seated by the fire.

"Would you take a telephone message to Hilltop Club for me?" she asked. "I will give you twenty-five cents if you will." She had made a quick survey of the man, and had decided that his rather rough attire gave her an excuse for believing that he would not refuse the money. "You can say that you want to use the telephone for Miss Trent," she went on. "I would like you to call up Buckley's stables, and ask them to send us a carriage right away. We must get back to town, and this car may not go for an hour yet. There is only one other on this route, and they wait till this gets back before it starts. They run so few in winter time, you see."

The young man had arisen when she came in. "I shall be very glad to go for you, miss," he said.

Rosalie opened her purse and handed him a silver quarter.

He gently waved it back. "I am very glad to go," he said. "It is nothing. I would much rather be walking than be sitting still waiting."

"Oh, but you must take it," insisted Rosalie. "I shall not feel satisfied unless you do. I should not be willing to have any stranger do an errand like that for nothing."

In the darkness, she could not see the smile with which the young man accepted the silver piece which she pressed upon him.

"Thank you," he said quietly, and immediately left the car.

Rosalie followed him. "You understand," she said, "that I want the carriage from Buckley's to come to the end of the line as soon as possible?"

He lifted his hat saying, "Very well, miss," and walked away.

"You'd better come inside, girls," said Rosalie. "It is warm in the car and as cold as charity outside, and I do believe it is beginning to snow. You mustn't stay out there another minute! I've sent for a carriage."

"You have? How did you send?" asked Janet.

"I found a young man who was willing to go to the club and telephone to the stable for me. I hope he'll not decide to pocket my twenty-five cents and then not go near the club."

The three girls entered and warmed themselves by the fire. They seemed to be the only passengers for this late trip, unless the young man should return.

"We may have a long wait," said Rosalie, "so we may as well make ourselves comfortable. What an unlucky thing to happen. I am afraid, Miss Austin, that you will have an uncomfortable memory of your first visit to Hilltop."

"Oh, I don't mind in the least," said Marian. "It is quite an adventure, and I do love anything out of the common, don't you? So long as we keep warm, it is all right. We're not hungry after the cakes and tea, so we can stand this for hours yet."

"I'd like it better if it were not dark," said Janet. "Hark, I hear wheels."

"And I see a light," said Marian.

"It can't be the carriage so soon," declared Rosalie.

"It isn't the carriage, but it is a carriage," said Janet peering out of the window, "and it is coming the other way. There, it has stopped."

Presently a big man, in a heavy overcoat powdered with snow, came stamping in. He was followed by a little old woman bundled up in a blanket shawl. "How soon does this car start?" asked the man of the conductor, who likewise had taken a seat inside.

"Ask me something easy," was the answer. "We've got to wait for the wrecking car. Sometimes it's an hour; sometimes it's two. Ye never can tell."

"Humph! We'll have to make the best of it, Lyddy," said the big man turning to his wife. "Joe's in a hurry to get back, and we'll jest have to wait to get home." He let himself down on the seat with a great grunt, and the little woman slipped into a place beside him.

The girls talked in undertones while the big man questioned the conductor and made remarks not flattering to the motor man.

After a time the car door opened again, and a meek looking countryman entered carrying a lantern. "Jest as well wait inside," he remarked apologetically, setting down his lantern, and brushing the snow from his coat sleeves. "Got to meet my two gals, comin' up on the six-thirty car."

"Dear me, it must be getting very late," said Rosalie. "I am getting uneasy. If that young man went right to the club, the carriage ought to be here by this time. Do you know anything about that young man I sent?" she asked the conductor.

"No, miss. He got on just a piece down the road, and said he was going back to town. I don't know as I ever saw him before, but he looked respectable."

"You didn't give him no money, did you?" asked the big man listening interestedly to the conversation, and glad to have a new topic developed.

"Why, yes," said Rosalie hesitatingly. "I gave him twenty-five cents."

"You did? Well, you ain't likely to see him nor your money again. There's a good bit of sharpers ready to make what they can offen any one," said the big man with a chuckle, hitching himself further along. "I'll bet you don't see him again. What do you bet, Lyddy?" he said turning to his wife.

"Why, I don't know, Cyrus," she replied timidly.

"Oh, well, just bet to make it lively," he said. "We've got to do something to keep up our spirits. I say he didn't go and that he won't come back."

"Then I'll say he did," returned his wife with an air of having done a rather rash thing.

"What do you say?" asked the big man of the conductor.

"I say he did go. He looked honest," said the conductor.

"You bet with me, don't you?" The big man nodded to Rosalie, who laughed and replied: "Yes, I say he didn't go."

"And the other young ladies?"

"I say he did," Janet told him.

"And I believe he didn't," Marian decided.

"What do you say?" The big man addressed the countryman who sat where his lantern cast a glow upon his sharp narrow face.

The countryman was cautious, from the battered hat upon his head to his thick hide boots. He was not one to commit himself. His caution was ingrained, and even in such a question as this, he refused to become involved. He didn't know; he couldn't say. He guessed he wouldn't vote either way.

"Then it's a tie," decided the big man, hitching himself still nearer the fire. "I guess you young ladies will find you have got to make your trip back to town on this car, for I guess you ain't going to see no carriage this night."

Rosalie sighed, but Janet whispered, "I believe the carriage will come yet. What did your messenger look like?"

"I couldn't see his face very well," Rosalie told her. "His clothes were rather rough, but his voice was pleasant, the voice of a gentleman. I might have thought him one, if he hadn't said 'yes, miss,' and 'no, miss.'"

Janet laughed. "That's no sign. I've heard lots of men say that. Virginians almost always do, and some of the Maryland men, especially those from the lower counties, and you hear it from men of the other Southern States."

"Oh, dear, suppose he should be a gentleman. Now, I think of it, he talked like a Southerner."

"If he was, he took your message and will come back and report."

Just then the door opened, and the light of the countryman's lantern fell upon the figure of a young man with face glowing from the sharp air, and with clothing snow-sprinkled. He looked around the car from one to another, then he addressed Rosalie. "Your carriage will be here soon, I hope. They promised to send one as soon as possible, but they were all out when I gave the order."

"Oh, thank you," said Rosalie struggling between a desire to laugh and a feeling of self-reproach.

Janet clutched her spasmodically, and Rosalie turned to see, by the dim light, confusion and surprise upon her face.

"What's the matter?" she whispered, as the young man took a seat at the further end of the car.

Janet moved up to the other extreme end and Rosalie followed her.

"What is it?" she repeated.

"Don't you know?" said Janet. "Don't you know? It is Mark, the perfect man."

Rosalie turned her head quickly and as quickly looked away. "Oh, dear, what have I done?" she said in distress. "I'll have to drop chemistry, that is clear."

Janet began to laugh. "I am going over to speak to him."

"I think you are heartless," said Rosalie. "Perhaps he will forget the name I gave him, and if he never has to encounter me in the lecture room of the laboratory, he may never know. For pity's sake don't do anything to make him remember, Janet."

"Oh, but he will, anyhow, and I think it is much better to make a joke of it, and then invite him to ride home with us."

"Janet Ferguson!"

"Yes, certainly. I think that would be a piece of diplomacy. It would show our gracious appreciation of his services and give you a chance to explain."

And before Rosalie could say another word, Janet had crossed the car and had seated herself by the side of Mr. Evans.

"I don't suppose I could expect you to remember one sophomore among so many, even in broad daylight, Mr. Evans," she began, "but as I happen to sit in Bains II two or three times a week, and as I remember you only too well, I thought I would speak to a companion in misery."

The young man smiled. "It is rather a dubious compliment to be remembered in the way your words suggest," he said a little awkwardly. "I do remember your face, but not your name."

"I am Janet Ferguson. I am glad you remember me by my face and not by my work. My friend, Miss Trent, is covered with confusion because in the dark, she offered you a reward, so I want you to reassure her or she will have to drop out of chemistry, from sheer mortification. We all want you to give us your protecting presence back to town, so won't you accept a seat in the carriage you were so good as to order?"

"I shall be most happy," returned Mr. Evans.

"There it is now," cried Janet. "I see two lights bobbing along toward us; they must be carriage lamps."

"I will go and hail it," said Mr. Evans, hastily beating a retreat.

Janet made her way to the other end of the car. "The carriage has come, girls," she said, "and Mr. Evans is going to see us safely home in it."

The big man grinned as Rosalie passed him. "We lost our bet, didn't we?" he said.

Rosalie rushed on without saying a word, and was glad that the darkness prevented any one's observing her hot cheeks.

Mr. Evans gravely handed the trio into the carriage, and then Janet presented him to her friends. Rosalie faltered out some sort of apology, and Mr. Evans, now less shy with three girls than with a single one or with a whole class, laughed.

"I knew you thought me a country bumpkin, and so I am," he said.

"But it was so dark," returned Rosalie.

"Quite a sufficient excuse for any sort of mistake," agreed the young man. "For all that, there have been times in my life when I might have been glad enough to take your quarter, though now—"

"No quarter?" cried Janet. "Has it got to come to sword's points, Mr. Evans? I thought you had forgiven Miss Trent."

They all laughed, and Rosalie said: "Please give it back to me."

"On the whole," returned the young man, "I think that I shall keep it, if you don't mind."

"No," murmured Rosalie, "I don't mind, but I should like to feel that you don't mind either."

"Oh, dear, no," returned Mr. Evans. "It has given me a chance of meeting you young ladies in this very informal way, and I should like a souvenir of my first adventure in this college town. I appreciate all that comes to me in that way, I can assure you. I also appreciate your kindness in offering me a place in your carriage, for I should have had either a long cold walk, or a very stupid wait, and, to tell you the truth, I am desperately hungry and want my dinner. I started out for a walk and thought I would ride back on the hapless car. It is an ill wind, you know."

"That's a very nice way to put it," said Janet. "I am rather glad of the adventure myself. One needs them at college, and I have had one or two."

"Yes, so say we all of us," remarked Rosalie. "What was your college, Mr. Evans?"

"The old University of Virginia first, then the Johns Hopkins. I took a post-graduate course at the latter place."

"Then are you from Maryland or Virginia?"

"From neither. I am from North Carolina."

"Oh," said Janet in a satisfied tone, "I said you must be from one of the Southern States."

"You knew my accent?"

"It wasn't that altogether."

"What then?"

"It was because no one but a Southern man would say 'yes, miss,' and 'no, miss,' as you do."

"I am afraid that is a provincialism that one seldom hears in the cities."

"But I like it," protested Janet. "I think that courtesy and chivalry are on the decrease. I think it is a great pity that no one seems to have time or to care to keep up the beautiful old politeness of our grandfathers."

"And our grandmothers," put in Mr. Evans.

"Now, you make my conscience smart again, Mr. Evans," said Rosalie.

"There is no occasion for any one's conscience to smart because she has been both polite and generous," said Mr. Evans gallantly. "Do you stop here? Then our pleasant drive is over. I shall feel hereafter that I have at least three friends in this stranger town, and that two of my students are not unknown to me."

"And now that it is a friend to whom we must account for our work, we shall struggle doubly hard with all those H O's and things," said Janet.

They parted in gay good humor, and it was a laughing, blushing, chattering trio that threw aside their hats in Rosalie's room, while no girls could have been more pleased with an adventure.

[CHAPTER IX]

CARAMELS AND A CAT

WHEN Janet reached her room the night of her adventure in the car, she astonished Teddy by the account of her experiences. Both agreed to keep the whole thing a secret for the sake of Rosalie.

"Although," said Janet, nursing her knees before the heater, "it is almost too good to keep, and if it were any one else than Rosalie, I would simply have to tell it. How Cordelia and Lee would enjoy it! I know I shall laugh when I see Mr. Evans on Tuesday. I shall have to take a seat very far back in the lecture room, if I don't want to disgrace myself."

In spite of this declaration, Janet managed to preserve her dignity, for Mr. Evans's demeanor was such as to win her respect, and she did not care to bring any special attention upon herself. He had a bow and a smile for her when she encountered him in going through the corridors in any of the recitation halls, or when they met upon the street. She liked him, and became more interested in her work under him, astounding her intimates by her newly acquired zeal.

"I couldn't have believed it of you," said Lee Penrose. "You really meant it when you said you would surprise us. I notice that Mr. Evans gives a kindly eye to you when he has cause to address you. Have you met him anywhere outside the lecture room?"

"Why, yes," said Janet frankly. "I was in the car with some friends one day when he got in and I met him then."

"You are a sly boots, Janet Ferguson."

Janet laughed. "I learned in my freshman year that the only way to get over your fear of lions is to walk fearlessly up to them. I used to dread the days when we had to go to Professor Satterthwaite, and now I think he is a dear. I could even tell him so. I find that a little temerity goes a great ways. It is more to be desired than honey in the honeycomb, at times, when one is at college. Look at Lallie Patton; how utterly sweet she is, and yet it all goes for naught. If she would savor her sweetness with a little rashness, she would have far, far better marks."

"True, oh queen. Lallie is as inane as soft boiled rice and white sugar," said Lee. "You couldn't expect any one to be even aware of her existence; she is so absolutely colorless. I doubt if there is a professor in the college who knows her by name though he may have met her in a street car a dozen times, while you—"

"While I, or me—what about me?"

"You have individuality enough for half a dozen. Your likes and dislikes are certainly decided enough."

"Even when it comes to cats," said Janet with a little smile. "I dare maintain that I like them. I'm going to the study, Lee. Come along; we'll find Cordelia and Teddy there."

"Some of those freshmen on the floor above need looking after," remarked Cordelia as they entered the study.

"What have they been doing now?" asked Janet depositing her books on a chair.

"They've been having hilarious times after dark. Their morals need attention," said Cordelia with a shake of the head.

"What special girls are they who have so wrought upon waking hours?" asked Janet sitting down and putting her head in Cordelia's lap.

"Marcia Bodine and Jessie Turner, notoriously, though there are others."

"Hm! They have the rooms directly above ours, haven't they, Teddy?"

Teddy nodded without taking her eyes from her book.

"Good," exclaimed Cordelia; "that makes it easy!"

"Why good, and why easy?"

"Lee and I will pay you a visit this evening and then you will find out. The way some young persons carry on is scan'lous, as Lee says."

"We never carried on in our freshman days, oh no," said Janet sarcastically.

"We never did in just this way. We confined our frivoling strictly to foolishness among ourselves. We were merely playful kittens. We never did this way."

"What way?"

"We never hung out the windows at night and sent notes down, by a string, to boys below, nor did we allow youths to send boxes of candy up to us by the same covert means," said Cordelia, "you know we didn't."

"And I know why."

"Then why?"

"Because we didn't get the chance. Do you suppose you, Cordelia Lodge, or Lee or Fay, or any of us would be above getting hold of a box of candy in any way that she could?"

"Well, we wouldn't encourage any one to send it to us, you know right well; but if it came our way without our seeking it, that would be another thing," said Cordelia; "and that is why," she continued, "I am glad those reprehensible freshmen have a room directly over yours. We will put a stop to their receiving candy while we must go without. We will not go without. Turn down the lights in your room, Janet, and we'll be along about eight o'clock. Keep a strict watch by the window and don't let anything pass by."

Lee and Teddy laughed at Cordelia's solemn and impressive manner. Then the girls turned their attention to grammars and dictionaries to the exclusion of trivialities.

At eight o'clock that evening, Cordelia tapped at Janet's door and entered to find the lights out, Teddy and Janet wrapped in golf capes, and the window open.

"Sh!" warned Janet. "You're just in time. They have sent a note down. We let it go."

"Of course you would have to do that," Cordelia told her. "You couldn't intercept a note, much as you might discountenance the sending of it, but one can waylay supplies. How many youths are down there, Janet?"

"Three, I believe."

"I looked out of our window before I came in," said Lee, "and there were heads out all along, above and below. I hope that there is no one under this room who has it borne in upon her to discipline the erring freshmen."

"No, there is no one there," Cordelia told her. "I took care to see to that. Irene Thayer and Madge Kittredge have that room, and I gave them tickets to an organ recital to-night. They were so pleased by my little attention, and said they doted on organ recitals, so they would be sure to go. Peep out, Janet, and tell us what you see."

Janet obeyed, but drew in her head almost immediately. "They are gathered together in a group and seem to be discussing something. I think they are tying something on the string, but I can't be sure."

"Be ready for it," said Cordelia. "Be sure you don't miss it, whatever it is."

Janet stood in readiness and presently saw the string begin to move. The girls above were drawing up their prize slowly. In a moment, a square white package appeared. Janet grabbed it and drew it in.

"Ah-h," came in disgusted tones from above, but a laugh went up from below.

Unfastening the string, Janet flung it out again and saw it hurriedly drawn up. She opened the box and tested its contents.

"Caramels, girls, and very good ones. Help yourselves." She passed the box around.

"I think," said Cordelia, "that we may as well watch the sequence of events. The youths may not be discouraged. Let us wait for further developments. Two boxes of candy are better than one, if one should prove to be only yellow-jack. They will probably think that we are not astute enough to believe they will send up a second box, but I think they will not want to disappoint those abandoned little freshmen. Remember we are acting in behalf of the powers that be. It is against all rules to hold clandestine correspondence with the gilded youth of the city."

"Why gilded youth, in this instance, Cordelia?" asked Janet.

"Because only gilded youth could afford to buy enough candy to satisfy the appetite of a freshman. Let's shut the window, and regale ourselves while we wait to see what is coming next."

They fell to and were not long in making way with the box of caramels, as what four girls cannot do in a short space of time?

"The moving finger writes," whispered Janet. "I see a little white messenger floating down upon the end of the string."

"Let it go on its mission," said Cordelia. "I really don't care for any more candy, but the rules of the college must be regarded, and we must do all that we can to prevent those misguided young women from placing themselves under the ban of the faculty's displeasure. If they only knew how we are sacrificing ourselves in their interest, they would surely show proper gratitude. I suppose every one of us will waken with a headache and a metallic taste in her mouth after those caramels."

"Answer for yourself, Cordelia," said Lee. "It takes more than one box of caramels to give me a headache, and I have eaten no more than quarter of that amount this evening."

After what seemed a very long time, the string began to move again; this time very slowly as if something weighty were fastened to it. Janet cautiously opened the window and in a few minutes, a box three times the size of the first one, appeared. It took but an instant to secure it. There was a mocking laugh from above and subdued cheers and cat-calls from below.

"It doesn't feel solid like candy," said Janet. "It has a queer feeling."

"Don't open it in the dark then," said Edna. "You don't know what trick they may be playing us."

"Suppose you don't open it at all," suggested Lee.

"Not open it at all? I never in the world could let it go again. What would you suggest my doing with it, if I don't open it?"

"Oh, just tie it on the string again and let it down."

"No, don't, Janet," interposed Cordelia. "That would be holding direct communication with the forbidden sex. Our object is to prevent that very thing. Let us see what it is. We want to know the joke, whatever it is."

Janet turned up the light and went over to the divan where she cautiously began to open the box. It was securely tied. "There's something moving inside," she cried excitedly. "I can't stop to untie it. Get me a knife or a pair of scissors, somebody, quick."

"No, no," cried Edna; "it might be a snake."

"Or a mouse," said Lee.

"Or a rat," suggested Cordelia.

"Then get out of the way," said Janet calmly, beginning to snip the cords. Lee and Edna skurried into the next room, but Cordelia stood her ground. Janet lifted off the cover of the box to disclose a blinking, winking little kitten that had been quite content to curl up in the shelter of the box, but that thus suddenly disturbed, looked up into Janet's face, opened its little pink mouth, and gave utterance to a very small but plaintive mew.

"You darling!" cried Janet, picking up the small creature and snuggling it in her neck. "I'd like to keep you, baby kitty. Oh, for a smitchin of milk."

"I know who has some," said Lee, who, with Edna, had returned as soon as it was discovered that no terrifying creature was contained in the box. "Grace Breitner gets a jar of milk every day. She drinks it at night. The doctor said she must. She will spare a little, I know."

"Do ask her if she will," said Janet. "There's a good child, Lee."

And Lee sped away, returning with the desired milk and with Grace.

"There, kitten," said Lee, "see what the good lady has brought you. It's right cold, Janet. I'll warm it a little."

"Isn't it a dear," said Janet, stroking the soft gray fur of the little cat, and watching it admiringly as it delicately lapped the warm milk and then in a mature way began to wash its face. "Let's adopt it into the class, girls, for a mascot. Mike will take care of it if we pay him a little. He can take some milk for it, and he is so kindhearted that he will be sure to treat it well. We can borrow it then, whenever any one of us gets homesick and wants something cozy and homelike to comfort her."

"I SHOULD LIKE TO KEEP YOU, BABY KITTY."

"That's just what we can do," cried the other girls. "Brilliant thought, Janet."

"Come here, Mascot," said Lee. "Let me look into your innocent blue eyes. I shall borrow you whenever I feel myself weakening in my work, and I shall trust to you to bring me good luck. What are you going to do with it to-night, Janet?"

"Oh, I'll keep it right here, and let it sleep on the foot of my bed. I'll take it to Mike in the morning, and I know it will be all right."

The next morning as she was carrying the kitten to Mike's quarters she met Jessie Turner in the corridor.

"Where did you get your kitten?" asked Jessie with an air of innocence.

"It came in on the night express," said Janet. "Isn't it a darling? I just adore kittens," she added enthusiastically.

"What are you going to do with it?"

"Take it down to Mike to keep for the sophomore class. We are going to make it our mascot. It will be a real joy to have a kitten to borrow once in a while. I am so much obliged to whoever sent it, for it was a lovely surprise, you know. By the way, I wish you would thank your friends for the excellent caramels they sent us; we enjoyed them so very much."

Jessie gave rather a sickly smile. "I know one thing," she said. "Next year we shall be more careful in selecting our room."

"So I would be," returned Janet suavely. "One has such a lot to learn about everything the first year. One very important thing is to correct wrong impressions about rules. It is an awful thing to be brought up before the faculty for misdemeanors, I have heard. I'd advise you to remember that."

With which parting piece of advice, she nodded to Jessie and continued her way to the lower floor, leaving the freshman scared and abashed.

Mike readily consented to take charge of the kitten, and scarcely a day passed but it was borrowed by one sophomore or another, so that its lines fell in pleasant places.

It was a long time, however, before Janet heard the last of the joke, for the freshmen, for weeks, made it a point of waylaying her in the halls and saying: "Miss Ferguson, I hear you have a kitten. How did you come by it?"

But Janet was finally a match for them, for she would forestall them by saying: "I hear you freshmen are very fond of caramels; why don't you get some of your friends to send you some?"

And so at last, the subject of cats and caramels was dropped. In some way the "gilded youth" were warned not to trust their offerings to so uncertain a means of transport as a string let down from a window, for not only did wily sophs lie in wait for them, but there was an added danger of discovery by persons less ready to keep their counsel than these same sophs.

However, Janet concluded, after this experience, that life would be a little more independent if she could give up dormitory life another year. And one day late in the semester, as she sat with Mascot curled up in her lap, she remarked to Edna: "Next year I mean to give up Hopper Hall, and go to a private house. Will you join me, Ted?"

"Why, of course, if you like; or rather, if papa and mamma agree. They think I am better off here than anywhere else."

"I think it is the best place, too, for the first two years, but see how the freshmen crowd in, and next year there will be fewer of our friends than are here now. I think when we become juniors we might venture out into a lodging or a boarding house. I think we ought to have all the experiences that are coming to us. Now, suppose instead of these two rooms, we could each have a bedroom and a common sitting room with an open fireplace; think how fascinating it would be."

"We'd miss Cordelia and Lee, and all the junketings that go on here," returned Edna doubtfully.

"We would, in a measure, but there are only Cordelia and Lee, and two or three more whom we would care for specially. Maybe we could get into a house where there would be room for our special crowd, and then there would be no end of good times. I mean to keep my eyes open for such a place, and I'll sound the other girls on the subject. Some of the seniors have lovely rooms outside, and they will be giving them up another year. I feel that I need an open fireplace more than anything in life; it is so conducive to thoughtfulness."

"Life isn't entirely made up of open fireplaces," said Edna, bending forward to tickle Mascot's ear.

"We could take Mascot with us," said Janet. "Think how he would enjoy an open fire."

"That settles it," said Edna, rising to open the door to a caller.

[CHAPTER X]

THE HERO

JANET had just received her morning's mail and sat absorbed in her letters on the steps of the gymnasium. Edna, near her, was looking over a newspaper from home, when she heard an exclamation from her roommate which made her put down her paper and look up.

"Oh, Ted, Ted," cried Janet, "what do you suppose will happen next? If I didn't want so awfully to be at home this summer, I'd accept the first invitation that would take me away."

"Why, what on earth?" exclaimed Edna.

"You never in the world will guess," replied Janet. "This letter, if you please, is from Stuart. He says he realizes that his brotherly attentions have not been overwhelming, and that he hasn't been near me this year, but he has been awfully busy, athletics and things besides the regular grinds, but he means to come up for Class Day. Do you realize, Ted, that it is less than a month off?"

"I'm beginning to, when I think of exams," said Teddy, with a wry face. "But go on. I am simply dying to hear what the trouble is to make you feel so desperate. Surely it isn't because your brother Stuart is coming."

"Heavens, no. Prepare yourself, Ted. He is going to stay at the Austins'."

Janet leaned forward and emphasized her words with a tap on the steps with a folded paper.

"For pity's sake, Janet!"

"You may well say, for pity's sake. Isn't it dreadful? It seems that he met Mr. Van Austin a few months ago, and they have become quite intimate. Stuart says, furthermore, that Mr. Austin has heard of me from his Cousin Marian, and is very anxious to meet me. Oh, is he? Maybe he is, but how about me? Stuart says a lot of the boys are coming up, but that he and another man are going to stay at the Austins' and for me to make no engagements, for he expects that we shall all have a royal time. He wanted to know about you, and said he hoped you would not have so many engagements that he should not be able to see you. I am glad there is the third man for Marian."

Edna looked a little conscious, for her visit to Janet the year before had developed a mild summer flirtation, which, though it had not been followed up, was of the nature to break out again as opportunity afforded.

"To think," Janet went on, "that after all this time, fate has ordained that we three are to meet, and that we shall see 'the hero' at last. Isn't it too funny? As you value your life, Teddy, don't ever, ever let him find out that we have met before. Oh, me, how surprised Becky and Rosalie will be to see us parading around with him. Don't let us tell them anything about Stuart's coming, not till we can suddenly spring the surprise upon them."

Edna agreed, and gathering up their belongings, they walked across the campus to Hopper Hall.

The days sped by rapidly till they brought the last week of the college year. Examinations over, Class Day's importance became subservient, in Janet's estimation, to the fact of the meeting with "the hero" and the popularity which attached itself to a girl with an agreeable brother.

The boys had promised to arrive the evening before Class Day, and Marian had brought an invitation to dinner from her aunt, so that both Edna and Janet were in an unusual state of excitement when the evening came.

"Dear me," said Edna, twisting herself around to look at the back of her gown, "I feel all in a flurry. Am I all right, Janet? I don't see why I should get rattled over a little thing like this. How shall you feel when you meet old Mr. Austin?"

"Like laughing. We must avoid the sofa; it may suggest the relation between ourselves and a certain former occasion," said Janet, pinning a fluffy bit of tulle to her collar. "I believe I won't wear this after all," she continued, throwing down the knot. "Don't you think I look better in white, Ted?"

Edna laughed. "I'm not the only nervous one, it seems. Yes, by all means wear white; that gown with the little round neck, I like you in that. See how free I am from jealousy when I advise you to wear your most becoming costume."

"It is a good thing we began to dress in time or we should be in a perfect rush," said Janet, slipping out of the frock she had first put on. "I want to get there before the boys, though. Have I changed much in a year and a half, Ted?"

"I should never recognize you for the same person," returned Edna laughing. "How about me?"

Janet laughed in turn. "Your own parents would not recognize you, so great is the change in you. We'll trust to the difference in dress and time to keep our secret."

"But why," said Teddy, after a thoughtful pause, "why are we so bent upon its being such a dead secret?"

"I don't know," replied Janet, putting the last touches to her toilet, "I suppose because we began that way, and we can't get out of the habit."

"There is nothing disgraceful to account for. It was what might have happened to any one. We didn't do anything very dreadful, and what we did, we had to do. Suppose they did find out, what of it?"

"Why, nothing, come to think of it. Nothing at all." Janet laughed. "Aren't we geese to keep up such a mystery and such an excitement over a matter the importance of which, and the mystery of which, exists simply in our imaginations? All the same, I cannot get rid of a sort of surreptitious feeling whenever I go to that house, and I am conscious this minute of a real necessity of being very secretive. It is foolish, but it has grown with my growth and strengthened with my strength. There, I am ready at last."

"Come, sally forth then."

"Isn't it funny," said Janet, when they had arrived, and were waiting Marian's appearance, "that we haven't the least idea what that young man looks like, whether he is tall or short, good-looking or ugly. There will be two of them, Ted; you decide at first glance which you think is 'the hero' and I will do the same, then we will tell afterward which one we thought him to be."

They had not long to wait, for presently Marian came in, then Mrs. Austin. Later Mr. Austin, senior, arrived and was presented. At the sound of his throaty voice, Janet gave Teddy a sly look.

"Those boys ought to be here," said the gentleman, fidgeting around. "That clock is three minutes slow. They are due now; in fact they should have been here ten minutes ago."

"And here they come," said Marian, who had drawn aside the curtain and was looking down the street. "They are crossing over. I'd know your brother at a glance," she said, turning to Janet. "Isn't it funny how it has all turned out? I met you, and your brother met my cousin all within a few months, and now we all meet together here. I wonder we didn't know about the common acquaintance before this."

"Stuart is such a wretched correspondent," Janet told her. "He never tells you any of the things he ought to."

She had hardly concluded her sentence when Mr. Austin, who had trotted to the door, welcomed the young men. "Here you are, boys. Fourteen minutes late, Van."

"Lucky it wasn't fifteen." Janet and Edna recognized the hero's voice. "The train was a little late, dad. All well?"

Janet's college career

Janet's College Career