But that was too much of a word for Edna, though she did not say so. Having stowed away Ada’s belongings, three frocks, two petticoats, a red hood and sacque, a blue dressing-gown and apron, she shut the lid. “I don’t think I’ll take her furs this week because she’ll not need them,” she remarked, “and I don’t think I will take any of my other dolls because I will be so glad to see them next Friday. Mother, if you come into town any time during the week will you come out to see us?”
“If I have time I certainly shall.”
Edna gave a sigh of content. It was surely going to be much better than last year. “Mother,” she said, changing the subject, “do you think Cousin Ben is silly?”
“He can be rather silly but he can also be very sensible. He is silly only when he wants to tease or when he wants to amuse a little girl I know.”
“I like his silly better than some of the big girls’s sillies. They giggle so much and aren’t funny at all. I think he is very funny. He says such queer things about the trees and plants in the woods. He twists their names around so they mean something else. Like the dog-wood, bark, you know. Mother, what is hazing?”
“It is the kind of thing the college boys do to those in a lower class; they play tricks on them which sometimes are really very cruel.”
“Do you mean they really hurt them?”
“Sometimes they hurt them very much. I knew of one young man who was forced into a pond of water on an icy day in the fall, and who nearly died of pneumonia in consequence of the cold he took from having to be in his wet clothes so long.”
“Do you think they will do anything like that to Cousin Ben?”
“I certainly hope not, though no doubt there will be some tricks played on him as he is a Freshman.”