"Oh! Perhaps, then, she isn't going to the college."
"Yes; she must be. This road goes nowhere else. But she is a freshman, of course."
"An eccentric, I fancy," drawled Miss Purvis. "You must know that each freshman class is bound to have numbered with it some most surprising individuals. Rarae aves, as it were."
Miss Dexter laughed. "But the corners are soon rubbed off and their peculiarities fade into the background. When I was a freshman, there entered a woman over fifty, with perfectly white hair. She was a dear; but, of course, she was an anomaly at college."
"My!" exclaimed Helen. "What did she want to go to college for?"
"The poor thing had always wanted to go to college. When she was young there were few women's colleges. And she had a big family to help, and finally a bedridden sister to care for. So she remained faithful to her home duties, but each year kept up with the graduating class of a local preparatory school. She was really a very well educated and bright woman; only peculiar."
"And what happened when she came to Ardmore?" asked Ruth, interested, "is she still here?"
"Oh, no. She remained only a short time. She found, she said, that her mind was not nimble enough, at her age, to keep up with the classes. Which was very probably true, you know. Unless one is constantly engaged in hard mental labor, one's mind must get into ruts by the time one is fifty. But she was very lovely, and quite popular—while she lasted."
Helen was more interested just then in the row of cottages occupied by the members of the faculty, and here strung along the left side of the highway. They were pretty houses, set in pretty grounds.
"Oh, look, Helen!" cried Ruth, suddenly.