IV

"Quae jocum suspiciet, eam oportet ridere;Quae non, oportet aliis ridentibus ridere.Ne lacrima!Quot intellixistis?"

"Don't apologize for talking Latin, Evelyn," said Marjorie, with a comical glance at the group, "it's like our mother tongue."

"That was the way the Latin lecture used to begin," explained Ellen, for the benefit of the undergraduates. "You see we used to have lectures in Latin as a sort of elective."

"That sounds impressive; it did to me when I first heard it," responded Marjorie, "but those Latin lectures were the most humorous things you could imagine. You watched the Polyglot's face, and youknew when to laugh and when to weep, and you were a little dull if you didn't understand enough to raise your hand when he called out 'Quot intellixistis?'

"Do you remember the one on Irish bulls? In your honour wasn't it, Pat?" turning to Beatrice O'Hara, whose vaunted Irish blood was evident in her speech.

"I wish I'd kept a record of Pat's bulls," remarked Susan. "I often feel as though one of them was just the tonic I needed."

"Never mind," answered Beatrice, good-humouredly, "I once saw through one all by myself. That time I told you I was carrying a stool with me because I had to stand up."

"I often think of the way the Gifted chuckled, because you would say 'whenever a man died,'" added Ellen.

"I didn't deserve his ridicule; for I was the only person capable of understanding what he meant by his favourite 'on a mutual hand,' or of appreciating the beautiful idea of his 'tell all that you don't know about this subject.'"

"Oh, Marjorie," exclaimed Edith, "have you forgotten how you disgraced yourself just because you thought you noticed the joke introducing expression on a learned lecturer's face? You would go to theGerman lecture on Ulfilas, thinking it wise to make the most of all opportunities for getting up your German for your orals."

"Not a bit of it," interrupted Marjorie, "I came to myself to find the distinguished guests and the members of the Faculty gazing at me as though I were crazy, and you pinching me black and blue. And all because I had worked myself into hysterics of laughter over the Lord's Prayer in Gothic."

"Wasn't it queer in those days when everything was new?" inquired one of the audience.

"My dear child there never was a time when everything was new, and I know what I'm talking about, for I was the first freshman that ever spent a night in Bryn Mawr, and I then learned that Bryn Mawr already had a history that was venerable, customs that were inviolable. That first night I learned the Manus Bryn Mawrensium and the Maid of Bryn Mawr. I was early taught the tradition of the sacredness of the Harriton family cemetery, taken there by two sponsors, who felt the necessity of impressing us, the newcomers, with the past.

"In that stretch of woodland," here her voice took on a sentimental tone, "known as the Vaux woods, and still frequented by Bryn Mawr students, there lies nestling among the trees asecluded burying ground. Grey walls of ancient date bound it within narrow compass. The masonry sturdily defiant of time, has been mellowed by a growth of moss and lichen. To any eye a picturesque spot! In its calm but cheerful solitude, no inhospitable resting-place! You feel in a sense possessors of that place; you are aware that in some subtle manner it belongs to you; but fully to comprehend your own feelings you must hear the droll, though sentimental reminiscence of the first class of Bryn Mawr; you must picture to yourselves a group of students on the worn steps and the nervous, enthusiastic figure of that 'learned doctor,' as he walks up and down in front of them, declaiming ore rotundo and with all possible expression, the parting of Hector and Andromache. Yes, he taught us Horace," answering a question from one of the groups on the grass. "Oh, you have no such classes now. I couldn't imagine college without his Horace class."

"How we had to work in it, though," sighed Louise.

"Oh yes, but you know we always had his permission to shirk all other work that we might do his," came from Beatrice.

"And at last we had to protest," continued Edith. "Had we done all that was expected of us,we should never have gone to bed. Our protests passed seemingly unheeded, till one day just before Thanksgiving, the Polyglot entered the room, one shoulder heaved on high with the great pile of books he held under his arm. Having as usual begun his lecture in the corridor, he was saying as he came inside the door, 'I have with me a most interesting find, a manuscript Latin poem, unexpectedly come into my possession. I shall write it on the board and then ask some one to volunteer with a translation.' Then standing on tiptoe, at times jumping so that he might write at the very top of the blackboard, he began to copy some verses, but long before he had finished, the class was convulsed with laughter. For it was a graceful little apology for overworking us."

"When I think of Bryn Mawr," said Marjorie, "few things have left so vivid an impression on my mind as his class-room. I was under the spell of literature from the moment I heard him give out his first parallel passage. There was in his classes a magical exhilaration never to be forgotten. And to think you poor things don't know anything about it!

"It must seem very different to you now," put in a senior, sympathetically.

"To be sure it does, and I think nothing strikesme more than the light-hearted way in which you do things that we didn't dare to do for fear of bringing down rules on our heads. Like our ancestors we were constantly 'snuffing tyranny.'"

"Hadn't you self-government then?" asked a freshman in amazement.

"We had no government of any sort, and no despotism could have been more compelling than the nameless fear that hung over us, that we might some day do something that would lead some one to take away our liberty."

"I have always regretted the establishment of self-government," said Elizabeth Gordon, a graduate who was to receive her Ph. D. the next day.

"Not at all, not at all," Marjorie hastened to declare. "You were always so immersed in work that you never bothered with other people; but those of us that thought it our duty to keep an eye on the freshmen found our hands full. Why the trips that I have made with my Memorabilia under my arm to administer sugar-coated pellets of college-spirit have cost me many a good mark."

The reminiscences had filled the afternoon, and now the college-bell rang out, warning the various groups that dinner-time was at hand. With an apologetic laugh Marjorie started up, saying as shewalked along, "Six o'clock, and I've talked almost all afternoon! Well! Well! 'Tis but a sign of age."

"Age, you goose," laughed Edith, "weren't you always the 'garrulous particle'?"

"Well, weakness then, and a mistaken notion that there is no place like Bryn Mawr."

The beauty of the long June evening was not to be resisted, and as soon as dinner was over, the students hurried out of doors. An air of relaxation was everywhere noticeable. Those fagged out by examinations gained cheer and liveliness from the more careless, or loitered about in unregarded lassitude not disturbed by any sense of obligation as contributors to the brimming talk of their companions. It was the perfection of easy intercourse where every sentence is a free-will offering.

However far the little knots of good company might wander, they sooner or later gathered about the steps of Taylor Hall to listen to the senior singing. The effect was almost like a stage setting in its perfection, the grey buildings, the intense green of the grass, the blossoms on the trees, the dresses of the girls, the group upon the steps, withthe rays of the setting sun falling full upon it. This custom of singing on the steps was an innovation on the manners of the first years, but an innovation picturesque and pathetic. Its pathos touched the group of alumnæ standing at a little distance from the steps. Throughout the afternoon they had almost fancied themselves students again; now they had stepped aside and had become mere spectators, while the seniors were making the most of their last days.

Before the singing stopped darkness had crept upon the scene. Taking advantage of it Ellen slipped away unnoticed and wandered down the hillside. As she heard the strange voices singing the old songs, she suddenly perceived how far she had drifted away from her college days—from all that had been revived by the chatter of the afternoon. She could not but feel that Marjorie's power of awakening those trifling memories, and Edith's quick response to her whims and sallies, her humorous allusions indicated not a less, but a greater share in all that was vital and permanent than any she could claim for all her seriousness. A passionate regret rushed over her, aware now that in her hurry, her business, her very faithfulness, she had lost, almost past recovery, many of the privileges that had been hers; that, in her pursuit ofends, worthy enough to be sure, she had made no demands on the really precious things in her experience at college. For in this moment of reflection, those trivial and petty reminiscences, mere accidents in their student-life, became for her the summons to an act of recollection.

She had strolled across the daisy field and was standing on the brow of the hill looking out toward the west. The moon had risen. Seen in its light the sweep of landscape seemed to her more picturesque, fuller of appeal to the imagination. Details were lost sight of, contrasts of light and shade emphasized. The slope before her lay in the full moonlight. Beyond it a clump of trees showed dark against the lucent sky. In the farther distance the hills were wrapped in a soft mist, brightened here and there by the gleams from the clustered houses. The familiar scene was full of remembrances, but remembrances for the most part of her friendship for Marjorie and Edith. Long tramps across those hills had been their favourite exercise through the winter. The daisy field, the haunt of idle moments in the warm days of spring or autumn, had also been for them a special sort of study, reserved for choicest reading. Toward it too they had always wandered after the Sunday evening meeting. As they walked along their talkwould drift from the subject of the evening to things more personal, closer to their hearts, their individual perplexities, their individual faiths. Each one was then at her best, in the light of sympathy, showing herself as good or as noble as she really was. Those conversations, assumed to her kindled imagination, an actuality, a power, hitherto unperceived, becoming not only the record of their preferences in all matters great or small, their criticism of the activities and the thoughts of their own little world, but also the measure of their share in it. The little world thus recalled to her, had, she was beginning to remember, its care for holiness, for truth, for courage, and it had too its care for orderliness and beauty in its very frivolities—and there had been a discipline really stimulating even in that. The genius of the place expressing itself in this care showed itself in light-hearted frolic no less than in scholastic endeavor, for it determined the way in which things were done rather than actual achievements, thus uniting in voluntary submission to its influence those whom individual powers separated from one another, informing them with its spirit, till it became a part of them, not to be changed without the loss of something individual.

How vivid it all was, how persistent, yet how baffling its secret! Why could she not penetratethis secret and possess it? But as before she could neither arrest nor depict the ideas that were passing to and fro in her mind. Her thoughts flew to her speech. In it she had ignored everything but the definite, the tangible, and in so doing she had failed. Yet, even if she could seize the sentiment and translate it into words, she dreaded misapprehension—she could not forget her audience.

"Oh, here you are, Ellen," Marjorie broke in on her reverie, "I've just been singing your praises. It seems there are difficulties in the way of self-government, and I thought I'd help them by giving them a bit of our experience. So I told how you brought us through that bitter time, when we so nearly lost our liberties. As I told them I realized as never before how impossible it is to pass on experience. I could see before me the faces of the girls so drawn, so stern, with that pitiful sternness that only young faces catch; and then I seemed to hear Dr. Rhoads in chapel that next morning, reading to us that chapter about Grace and Law; and I could remember just how he stopped and looked at us after he read the words,—'For sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid,'—and then went on to tell usthat he believed that those words expressed our spirit and that as long as that spirit guided us we could be trusted to govern ourselves. It seems strange that while the impression of that time will never fade from our minds, we can pass on nothing but the tradition. There is no Dr. Rhoads now," she continued after a pause, "and I think I miss him more than I do any one else. He always used to gather up the events of our life here and put them into their proper relations."

"Yes, he entered with all his heart into the college spirit just as though he were one of us," agreed Edith.

"And for that very reason," said Ellen, "no part of his influence is lost. That spirit is the touchstone for all of us. However variable it is the one thing that persists and, so far, it has been as he understood it. Each student, whatever her gifts, must make it her own if she is ever to be anything but an alien here."

"It always needs Ellen to give the finishing touch," said Edith.

"If it had not been for you and Marjorie," insisted Ellen, "I should still have taken counsel of the cynical outsiders."

"Listen a moment," interrupted Marjorie, "that's it after all."

A band of girls was coming toward them through the moonlight and as they came they sang:

"Thou Gracious InspirationOur Guiding Star,Mistress and Mother, All Hail Bryn Mawr."

One morning some days later, Ellen was looking out upon a delightful garden in Indianapolis. The day was fine, if warm, and in the garden the roses were in full bloom. She was in the highest spirits; but her gayety of mood was a thing of the past five minutes and had nothing to do with the sunshine or the flowers. She was reviewing the occurrences of the last week and entertaining herself greatly.

Her speech had been made the day before with really brilliant success. It had been the most important event in a series of notable meetings and had been received in a way that might well have roused her to fresh endeavour. Yet in the moment of her greatest success she had shown herself strangely indifferent to her manifest duty. This was the result of her having discovered, just as she had begun to accept the fact of her triumph and the rewards that lay before her, that it was all due to a surprising mishap, something altogether beyondher control. She showed that she felt the importance of the occurrence by thinking of it steadily for the rest of the day and well on into the night. This was not because she wanted to think of it particularly; indeed she had made every effort to dismiss her preoccupation; but she could not rid herself of the idea that an accident was responsible for her triumph. In her perplexity she went over the whole thing time and again.

There had been an inspiring audience, so much she acknowledged, casting her mind over it. She had observed it in the moments before the meeting was called to order. Looking at the impressive throng she had been annoyed to think that she might have to use her notes. As she rose and moved toward the desk there had been a sudden hush and concentration of attention upon the platform, of so much she had been distinctly conscious. She had felt too that after she laid her notes on the table and began to speak, the intelligent interest which had greeted her opening sentences soon gave way to an eager, fixed intentness and breathless silence. Then all was a blank, till the restrained enthusiasm broke forth.

As soon as the meeting was over she had been overwhelmed by congratulations. Her one desire had been to escape, and she felt it difficult to begracious to her admirers. She had managed at length to get away, and handing her notes to a reporter, had hurried to the door. There she had been stopped by an old gentleman, who, though an utter stranger to her, greeted her as an old friend.

"Now, Miss Blake, you'll come home with us. You'll not stop another minute at the hotel. No, I'll not hear a word. I won't take a refusal. Nobody has as good a right to you as I, your father's old friend, Ned Cartwright." Then he had grasped her warmly by the hand, exclaiming delightedly,—"My dear young lady! My dear young lady! It was your father over again, Harry Blake, Prince Hal we used to call him. And is that the way you girls feel about college? Bless me, I'd never have believed it. I have heard so much solemn nonsense talked about what you do and say and think. But I'll never believe it again. Why, you might have been talking about my own college days, and your father's too,—Prince Hal we used to call him. I'll never forget how we stole the clapper, he and I. And they do it still, my dear, just as we used to, and you steal your clappers too, and, bless me,—I'll send every girl I can to college, if that's the way you all feel about it. That's education! It isn't all books,—never was and never will be. Just ask your father and he'll tell you so too. Yes, I giveyou my word, every one of them shall go. I'll see to it. I'd as soon shut them off from fairy stories and Walter Scott, and falling in love, because they were girls. It's romance, that's what it is and they've a right to their romance; for I'm an old man, my dear, and perhaps you'll take my word for it, it's the romance of life that counts,—for the girls as well as the boys."

While he was still talking Mrs. Cartwright had come up with a welcome as hearty as his. Their hospitality had been irresistible, and Ellen, powerless before it, was soon walking with them to the carriage. But just as she had been about to get in she had been stopped once more.

"Pardon me, Miss Blake," some one had said, and there had stood the reporter with her manuscript.

"I think there must be some mistake," he had gone on to say, "the paper you gave me deals with the practical value of college life and you talked this morning on what you called 'the Poetry of College Spirit.'"

Then, as in a flash, Ellen had seemed to understand the sense of something strange and bewildering in the experience of the past hour, for she then remembered that when she had stood facing her audience in the moment before she began to speak,she had seemed to forget her notes, her listeners and herself, and to apprehend the meaning of her four years at Bryn Mawr so clearly that it came to have for her a sort of personal identity. Carried beyond herself by her delight in the assurance of something actual, she had spoken unpremeditated thoughts. One might almost say, she thought, that the memories revived by the visit to Bryn Mawr, then crowded out by her intense preoccupation in the business of the convention had, as in revenge, taken possession of her, forcing all other thoughts from her—had almost as it were expressed themselves. Much that had puzzled her in Major Cartwright's criticism was now explained. A trick of memory accounted for all—even her triumph. But she could recall nothing of her speech. The words were forever lost.

She had been overwhelmed by the strangeness of it all, and, do what she would, she could not keep her thoughts from wandering from the Major's eager questions of her father's doings to her own perplexing experience. At one moment she had seemed to be on the point of remembering the speech, to have the words on the tip of her tongue; the next to lose them more surely than ever. Though the Major was constantly bringing it to mind she was none the wiser for his references.That he had thought well of it she could not doubt, but she wanted to know what she had said. Long after she had gone to her room that night she had sat thinking. The poetry of college spirit! What had she said about it? Perhaps she had said something absurd, had made her subject ridiculous. It hardly seemed so from what she had heard. And yet,—could she think that the inspiration of that moment of discovery had lasted through an hour of unconsciousness? How much more probable that the shadowy something she had tried to define had been so real to the memory or the imagination of her hearers that the mere mention of it had for them an instant fascination.

And now this morning, finding herself the first downstairs, she had picked up the paper. She would find out at last. A few moments ago she had finished reading, and throwing the paper aside with the impatience of disappointment, had stepped out on to the porch. In those five minutes she had come to view the whole thing with a lively enjoyment.

There was a column about it in the paper, but no outline, nothing but praise and the hope that she would make her speech fully effective by publishing it. Was there perhaps a touch of malice in that suggestion? Had the reporter grasped moreof the situation than she had chosen to tell? With that thought amusement overpowered her,—amusement at herself above all. That she of all persons should be at a loss to know how she had done precisely what she desired to do—please everybody—seemed to her the perfection of irony. Her comic imagination, once kindled, swept everything before it, her self-importance, her views, even her curiosity. Then a delightful feeling of irresponsibility came upon her. The speech was none of hers.

"Well now, what an early riser you are. I hope you are not used up by the excitement of yesterday," came in cordial tones from the doorway and Major Cartwright came out to bid her good-morning.

"What, all alone!" looking about him. "Haven't you seen Mrs. Cartwright yet? She's been down a long time. I suppose she's out among the roses. We'll go on without her if you don't mind. She likes to take her time and cut all the roses before the sun gets hot, but it worries her to think she is keeping me waiting. So I humour her and myself too."

"Well, you'll not be asked to wait this morning, my dear Edward, I've got them all gathered." And Mrs. Cartwright came up from the garden with abasket of roses on her arm. "Come away to breakfast now. I'll arrange these afterward," leading the way to the dining-room.

The Major picked up the paper in passing, and looked at it.

"Oh here's all about your speech!" he cried, "I hope they didn't garble it very much."

"Far from that," laughed Ellen, "they don't attempt to tell what I said."

"What? You don't mean it. Nothing at all about it?"

"Oh, yes, compliments enough to turn my head. But the thought was evidently too much for——"

"Just listen to this, Lucy!" interrupted the Major after a glance at the criticism. "I don't believe you know what a distinguished young lady we have with us this morning,—'Indianapolis has heard much of the eloquence of Miss Blake, but Indianapolis was not prepared for the glowing words of yesterday.'" He read to Ellen's great amusement. "'It would be folly to attempt an abbreviated report of that splendid piece of oratory. Instead we take pleasure in printing extracts from an article on a more practical phase of college life, confident that any words on woman's education from so able an exponent will be of the highest interest to our readers.

"'The speech made yesterday we predict, without hesitation will never be surpassed by Miss Blake,—it will be remembered as her masterpiece.'"

While he was reading Mrs. Cartwright had been watching Ellen and had decided that she had been blind the night before, for she had missed much of the attraction in her face. Just now Ellen's eyes twinkling with fun were fixed on the major's face, and Mrs. Cartwright watched her with a pleased smile.

"Your masterpiece he calls it," she exclaimed, as her husband finished; "isn't that just like a reporter? How does he know you'll never surpass it?"

"Bless me, I don't see how she could surpass it," ejaculated the Major, "I'll not call the fellow a false prophet yet."

"I don't believe you'll have the chance—ever," retorted Ellen. "I haven't an idea what I said and by the time I make my next speech no one else will remember."

"What do you mean, my dear young lady?" he asked astonished. "It was never in the world extempore."

"That or nothing." And Ellen, sensitive to a genial change in herself, though, perhaps but dimlyconscious of it, told the whole story with so keen a relish for the satiric elements in it, that her listeners were delighted. Her unconcern met with no protest from companions too unfamiliar with her ways to reproach her for not being quite herself. Elsewhere she might not have dared to disregard the imperious demands of what was expected of her; but here she was not coerced by any preconceived notions of what she was likely to do.

"And it's all gone from you?" said Mrs. Cartwright.

"Yes, just as completely as if the thing had never happened. It's just as though you had done something very clever in a dream, and found when you tried to do the same thing after you were awake that you had forgotten the most important part of it."

"But the fellow ought to have attended to his business better," said Major Cartwright. "What was he there for if not to report?" He took up the paper again. "The man's a fool. A plea for the higher education!"

"That's what it was meant for," murmured Ellen.

"It converted you, anyway," contended Mrs. Cartwright, nodding at him.

"Never heard anything so absurd," he went on disregarding them. "Where did he get all this stuff about the practical value of the higher education?"

"From me, I am afraid. You see when he found he couldn't have the best, he decided to take the next best, and asked me for the notes of the speech I intended to make. I tried very hard indeed to catch my thoughts about Bryn Mawr and pin them down for inspection as my views on college life. But they escaped me, I'm glad to say."

"I can't believe it of you. Why when you got through you had stirred in me afresh the enthusiasms of years ago."

"That's not so much of a compliment as it seems, my dear," interrupted Mrs. Cartwright. "His enthusiasm on some subjects is perennial. It needs only the word 'college' to set him going. But come along and help me with the roses. If we go on like this, we'll begin to think you just made an ordinary speech after all."

"And I do want to think it my masterpiece," said Ellen, rising to follow her. Then she turned to the Major with a humorous diffidence that hid a feeling too strong to show itself. "Perhaps it is just as well that I have to stand onmy attainment. If it were down in black and white some critical person would be sure to discover how much I owe to the eloquent ears of my audience."

Marian T. MacIntosh, '90.

Timothy Trask was an eminently correct young man. His dress, his speech, his manners were all the most correct of their kind. If he discovered that anything was the proper thing to do, he always did it, even to the extent of playing very poor golf in an irreproachable pink coat. He was a great lover of the antique, which is in itself a very correct thing to be at the present time, and he possessed a collection of ancient armour, which was hung about on the walls of his wide front hallway, a grim line of swords and battle-axes, and great round shields.

Large as this collection was, in the mind of the fastidious Timothy it was incomplete without a certain Crusader's dagger, exposed to view in a New York dealer's window. Timothy had stood looking at this dagger with longing contemplation, for once unconscious of his pose before the public gaze. His imagination had conjured up an enticing scene in which Timothy Trask figured as the centreof an admiring throng of acquaintances, all watching with breathless eagerness while he told the story of the ancient dagger and pointed out its jewelled hilt and the fine gold chains attached to each end. Then he had counted over his railway stocks, his mortgages and government bonds, and had sadly taken the train back to Philadelphia.

The dagger continued to fill an unobtrusive place in the New York window, and an altogether too prominent place in the mind of poor Timothy. All his antiques grew tiresome and commonplace in comparison with this one little jewelled hilt. At last one evening he decided that he must have it if it ruined him. With a sudden burst of confidence he told the whole story to three friends in his smoking room, and announced his intention of going to New York the next day.

Unlucky confidence for Timothy! A look of subtle meaning passed from one to another of the friends. One of them, in spite of warning glances from the others, picked up a copy of theLedgerfrom the table, and nonchalantly pointed to a full-page account of a May-day fête, reviving the Elizabethan plays and dances, to be given the next day at Bryn Mawr.

"Here's a lot about the learned ladies. Going to give some sort of show or other. Elizabethan!Hm! Reading extracts from history, I suppose, perhaps all dressed up, like a Dickens reading. It says something about 'correct costumes.' I wonder if Tim's cousin is to be in it. Look here, Tim, when are you going to take us out to see that pretty cousin of yours?"

"I have not seen Marion Hall since she was a child, and have no desire to make her acquaintance," said Timothy icily.

Because Timothy was so correct, he particularly detested and disapproved of college girls. They represented to his mind a mixture of spectacled phenomena of learning, and of cheering, basket-ball playing New Women. In either capacity he found them peculiarly objectionable. He often said of them, with a fervent horror he might have expressed towards wild Indians, "I sincerely trust it will never be my misfortune to meet one."

His feeling towards college girls was well known to these friends and it had occurred to one of them that it would be delightful to see Timothy at the May-day festivity, surrounded by hordes of college girls on their native heath. The incongruity of the picture was so pleasing to the others that the idea had been instantly seized upon, and they determined, by some hook or crook to get Timothy to Bryn Mawr.

Now the avowed trip to New York gave them their opportunity. One of them could meet him at the station and manage in some way to lead him astray.

The victim serenely played into their hands. When the conspirators appeared Timothy was just in the agony of trying to hide his near-sightedness and at the same time discover which was his gate. All the officials seemed occupied at that moment, and he had no time to go back to the bureau of information.

"Hello, Jenks, where are you bound for? I have just two minutes. Can you see which is the New York gate?"

"Over there," replied Jenks, unblushingly pointing to the sign "Bryn Mawr special," under which was a hurrying crowd in holiday attire. Timothy noted the throng and bustle of an express, and pushed through the gate just in time to get a seat.

"To the May-pole let us on,The time is swift and will be gone!"

The blue sky, the green campus, the laughter, echoing on every side, repeated the invitation of the song, while the sun poured gayly through the windows, and the voices without mingled withthose within. A breakfast party was in progress on the fourth floor of Merion. It was not the first time such a function had been held there, but this morning the fantastic costumes of the guests, the piles of gay cheese-cloth heaped in a corner, the swords and plumed caps lying on top of notebooks, gave the party an unusually festive and holiday appearance.

A herald clad in yellow and white, adorned with rampant lions before and behind, was scrambling eggs by the window-sill, and a forester in a brown jerkin was making coffee in one of the egg-shaped coffee-pots so apt to turn upside down when least expected. A marshal had just set fire to her blue and red coat-of-arms, and was kneeling in front of the divan, engaged in carefully pasting on a patch.

Every now and then a knock announced a newcomer whose costume was greeted with laughter and eagerly examined. Presently a forester appeared, in Lincoln green jerkin and smock. Her arms were full of many-coloured banners, which she proceeded to hang out of the window, flaunting an expanse of purple lions and gilded dragons upon the spring breeze. Then she procured a plate of eggs and potatoes, and a cup of coffee, and sat down on the floor.

"We have been indulging in a little archery practice this morning," she said, laughing softly at the remembrance. "It is going to be very picturesque shooting down that avenue of trees, but it is singularly fortunate that the target is safely out of sight!"

"Don't be discouraged! Wait till you hear the heralds striving to sound their horns," said the sword-dancer, who was sitting on a perilous rocking-chair without a back, while her hair was being turned up beneath her collar. "There, listen to them now!"

There came through the open window a feeble noise, ending abruptly in a squeak, followed by shouts of laughter. Looking out they saw a herald standing with her head thrown back and her trumpet raised to her lips, her tall, young figure, in its white and yellow, silhouetted against the green campus. A motley but appreciative audience paused in the task of putting up May-pole streamers to applaud her.

While the others were so engaged, the forester came and sat down on the floor by the marshal, and watched her put the finishing touches to the damaged costume.

"Will you do something for me?" she asked, a trifle shyly.

"With pleasure," said the marshal, outlining her coat-of-arms with black paint.

"Don't say you will so quickly. I had a letter from some one, the other day, saying he was coming to May-day. I wrote him that I didn't want him, but—I am afraid he will come anyway, and I don't want to see him."

"Oh!" said the marshal, looking up.

"I can't make up my mind," said the other girl. "I wish I could, but I can't, and I simply won't see him till I do."

"Oh!" said the marshal again. "I suppose you want me to keep him out of your way?"

"If you only would," assented the forester, with a pleading gaze.

"But my dear young innocence, there are going to be a few thousand people here, more or less. How am I to find one unattached young man?"

"Oh, I only mean, in case you happen to hear of his asking for me. People will come to you, you know. Don't have him too much on your mind."

"I will try not to," said the marshal, dryly. "If you will hear my advice, I think you had better see him for yourself, and settle it, yes or no, one way or other."

"You don't know how hard it is," murmured the forester, with a little sigh.

The marshal rose to her feet with a grim expression, which indicated that she would like the chance of settling it. And with an inward remark upon the nuisance of having men mixed up with college functions, she went to the oval mirror and put on her coat-of-arms.

"The rehearsal is at ten," she announced. "Now, please be on time, every one, so that it need not takequitethe whole morning to form the procession. Don't forget the cloaks for the band, Elizabeth,—and do all of you remember thatno oneis to wear patent leather shoes!"

She seized her marshal's staff and departed.

When Timothy arrived at the Bryn Mawr station, that afternoon, he found himself in the centre of a dense crowd, which was surging up the road. He had no liking for crowds, and avoided them on all occasions. It annoyed him intensely to be surrounded by indiscriminate numbers of chattering people, pushing against him, and pressing him along with them. In spite of his efforts to maintain his usual dignified carriage, he was swept along at a fairly rapid pace, through a gateway, and up a long path to the side of a low stone arch;through which appeared a vista of gleaming white road and green trees.

At Haverford when the familiar Cricket Club came in sight, Timothy had come to a sudden realization of the trick his friends had played him. And when every one trooped out of the train at Bryn Mawr, he had decided to yield to curiosity and make the best of a bad situation. But it was in no genial mood that he approached the college. And now he almost wished he had taken the next train back, to vent his anger on those three friends.

He was sandwiched in between two stout ladies, one of whom poked him in the neck with her parasol, while the other explained the details of Mary's costume, just completed the day before, by the maternal sewing-machine. Timothy correctly protected his necktie from the parasol's advances. Taking out his eyeglass, he assumed his most extreme expression of bored indifference, hoping to indicate to every one around him that he, at least, was not here willingly for a day's holiday, and anticipated no diversion whatever from anything forthcoming. The thought of himself, Timothy Trask, inside a woman's college, waiting by the roadside for a circus procession, was enough to make him grit his teeth, and swear at the threeidiots who had been instrumental in sending him there.

Suddenly a hush fell upon the expectant crowd. With a blast upon their shining trumpets, eight heralds appeared in Pembroke archway, dressed in white and gold, with the Pembroke coat-of-arms emblazoned upon their breasts. Behind came lumbering along four oxen, great, patient beasts, decked out with leaves and branches, dragging the May-pole. Some mighty forest-giant had been sacrificed to these revels. It was painted white, and festooned with garlands. A line of flower girls trooped along on either side, flowers in their arms, on their short gay-coloured skirts, and adorning their wide hats.

Laughter rippled down the line of spectators, as through the archway came nine donkies, one behind another, solemnly bearing the famousNine Worthiesof Old English pageant. Odds, my life, we find ourselves in high company! Here is Julius Cæsar, clad in scarlet, with a truly Roman nose, and behind him King Solomon, in all his purple glory, while Sir Godfrey de Bouillon, that virtuous knight, brings up the rear on a most restive steed. Next, mounted on a high cart, came the maidens of Spring, fighting their old battle with grey-coated Winter. That is right, pelt him withflowers, and cover his snowballs. He has no place to-day.

It seemed as if Pembroke Arch were a gateway to the past, and jovial Old England were pouring through it.

Now came the ring of horses' hoofs upon the stone paving. Make way, there, for Maid Marian, the Queen of the May, with Robin Hood, that gallant and sturdy rogue, riding by her side! There followed all his merry men, come from the shades of Sherwood to join in the revels, for what true yoeman will not trip a measure with a pretty maid, when the sun shines on May-day? Behind came the fool, in motley red and yellow, bells upon his two long ears, bells upon every point of his skirt and cape, bells upon the sceptre which he shook above his head. Happy fool, with light feet and lighter heart! Treading close on his heels the Hobby-horse was showing his paces. For the most part he walked along, sedately enough, saving his breath to curvet and prance, later on, in theRevesby Sword Plaie.

With music and laughter the pageant moved on, a train of shepherds with softly bleating sheep, milkmaids, peddlers, ballad-mongers, and last of all, mounted upon a float, a strange company indeed. They were dressed in classic Grecian foldsprepared to act inThe Excellent Pastoral of The Arraignment of Paris. Cupid is proverbially abroad on May-day, but here he stood, in actual guise, and Pan, too, playing his pipes, and stately Minerva, with her snaky shield.

The pageant wound in and out, around the grey stone buildings, a long thread of living colour. Before Timothy well knew what he was doing, he found himself pressing eagerly on with the crowd to the May-pole green. The flower-crowned pole was loosed from behind the patient oxen, and borne upon eager shoulders to the centre of the green. It was raised aloft in the air, tottered for an instant, a great cheer went up, and it sank into its socket. Then struck up the fiddles and pipes, the dancers hastened to their May-poles, and holding aloft the gay streamers began the dance with a bow and a courtesy.

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