“Kid,” said her father, “you’re so young that you don’t know that you’ll get over it. You get over everything.”
Jane thought that was a horrible philosophy. She heard her father moving about a little helplessly. Then he bent over and touched her shoulder.
“I’ll see you go to Bryn Mawr,” he said, “with Agnes.”
“Oh, let me alone!” cried Jane. “Just—let—me—alone!” She heard her father turn and walk quietly out of the room. Jane put both her arms tightly around André’s pillow. She was sobbing as if her heart would break. She thought it was breaking.
IV
I
The October sun was shining brightly down on the Bryn Mawr maples when Jane and her father first walked under the arch of Pembroke Hall, where Agnes was awaiting them. Jane thought Bryn Mawr was very beautiful. Much more beautiful than the pictures. The most beautiful place, indeed, that she had ever seen.
“Let’s look it over, Jane,” said Mr. Ward, “before we go in.” They strolled on, arm in arm, down the gravel walk beyond.
The campus stretched fresh and green before them. On one hand it terminated in a group of grey stone buildings, hung with English ivy. On the other it extended past a row of breeze blown maples to an abrupt decline, where the ground dropped off down a grassy hillside. In that direction you could see the rolling Pennsylvania country for miles and miles. Jane had never lived among hills. She thought the view was very lovely.
They passed some groups of girls, walking in twos and threes on the gravel path. They were laughing and chattering together and they paid no attention whatever to Jane and her father. Other girls were sitting, here and there, under the maples. Four or five ran out of a building, that Jane knew from the pictures must be Merion, and almost bumped into them. They were dressed in bright red gym suits, with red corduroy skirts, and they carried hockey sticks. They cantered across the campus toward the hillside, making a bright patch of colour against the green as they ran.
Pembroke Hall, as they returned to it, looked very big and important. Jane drew a little nearer to her father as they entered the front door. It seemed quite deserted for a moment. Then a coloured maid, in a neat black dress and apron, came out from a little room under the stairs. She said she would tell the warden. “The warden” sounded a bit forbidding, Jane thought. Rather like a prison. But when she appeared she proved to be a nice-looking girl with dark brown hair, not much older than Isabel. She shook hands with Jane’s father and told them how to find Jane’s room. It was on the second story, in the middle of the corridor.
Jane and Jane’s father walked alone up the wooden stairs. In the upper hall they met some more girls, laughing and shouting, hanging about the open doors of bedrooms. Inside the rooms was confusion twice confounded. Open trunks and scattered books and dishes and clothing flung on chairs. An odour of cooking chocolate permeated the air.
Agnes was waiting for them in the three-room suite. It looked very small to Jane, but otherwise just as it had in the catalogue. There was a little study with an open fireplace and a window-seat that commanded the campus, and two tiny bedrooms, opening off it. Agnes’s trunk was already unpacked. Agnes had come yesterday, straight from the steamer. She had already been out, exploring the country. A great vase of Michaelmas daisies was on the study table.
“Well, girls,” said Jane’s father, “this is great.”
It was great, thought Jane. It was much nicer than she had ever imagined. She didn’t feel shy any longer, now she had seen Agnes.
Agnes had taken her advanced standing examination in French that morning. It was easy, she said. Much easier than entrance.
Jane sat down on the window seat and gazed out over the campus. It looked very tranquil and pleasant. Yet exciting, too, with all those different girls, that seemed so much at home, walking about as if they owned the place. No one seemed to be watching them, as in school. No one was telling them what to do. As Jane looked six girls came out from under the arch. They were carrying a picnic basket and a steamer rug and several cushions and they wore green gym suits and corduroy skirts, just like the red ones Jane had seen before. They hung about under a big cherry tree under the window for a minute and they were all singing. Jane could catch the words by leaning out, around the ivy.
“Once there dwelt captiously a stern papa.
Likewise with him sojourned, daughter and ma.
Daughter’s minority tritely was spent,
To a prep boarding school, glumly she went.
One day the crisis came, outcome of years,
Father and mother firm, daughter in tears,
With stern progenitors, hotly she pled,
Lined up her arguments, this is what she said:
‘I don’t want to go to Vassar, I can’t bear to think of Smith.’ ”
They were strolling off across the campus, now, but Jane could still hear the words of the song.
“ ‘I’ve no earthly use for Radcliffe, Wellesley’s charms are merest myth,
Only spooks go to Ann Arbor, Leland Stanford’s much too far.’ ”
Their fresh young voices rose in a final wail in the middle distance.
“ ‘I don’t want to go to col—lege, if—I can’t—go—to—Bryn—Mawr!’ ”
“That’s a nice song,” said Jane excitedly.
“They sing all the time,” said Agnes. “The Seniors sing on the steps of Taylor Hall after dinner.”
“I’m going to love this,” said Jane.
Her father looked very much pleased.
“I hope you do, kid,” he said heartily. “And I’m sure you will. Jane’s had a pretty poor summer, Agnes.”
Agnes knew all about Jane’s summer. Jane had written her about André, just as soon as she could bear to put it down on paper. Agnes had sent her an awfully nice letter. She looked very sympathetic now.
“You must
