Janet's college career

by Amy Ella Blanchard

"Why didn't you go?"

"I didn't want to."

"It is too bad that we must be deprived of the boys' company this evening. Stuart said they must take the seven-thirty if they would reach the university in time for some sort of lark they were going to have. I wonder if we will be as enthusiastic alumnae as they are. The parents wanted to take in all the fun going, so they decided to go on with the laddies and leave me to follow. They actually believed I would be ready to go with them. Mamma understood, but I had hard work making father and Stuart see that I simply could not leave till to-morrow. Come, Ted, let's go up and see the girls. We know Lee is packing, but we also know that Lee would rather have the interruption than not, and maybe we can help her. If we can't be of any use, it will be fun to watch her, and we'll keep Cordelia from badgering her. I am glad there is nothing compelling this evening, and that we are left to follow the dictates of our own sweet wills. The alumnae dinner was quite as much as we could stand after the rest of the excitement."

Bright lights were burning in the rooms overhead which were strewn from end to end with Lee's possessions. "If you can find an inch not already occupied, you may have it," said Cordelia looking around at them from behind a pile of boxes.

"How will I ever get through?" said Lee pausing in her frantic rush. "I have always made it my rule never to do to-day what I can put off till to-morrow, but there are moments when I wish I were not so virtuous about it. My, but I am warm."

"We will all pitch in and help," said Janet, "and then we'll have time to cool off before bedtime."

"I am too dead tired to move," said Cordelia. "I was ambitious enough to get up early and finish my packing this morning by crack o' day. I knew if I didn't do that, I should find half of Lee's belongings in my trunks when I got home and half of mine would be in hers. I simply had to do it in self-defense, but I feel as if I had not been in bed for a week."

"And we have to start so early," complained Lee. "They will come for the trunks at six o'clock."

"All the more reason that we should get things straightened out so you won't have to be up half the night. Goodness, if my impedimenta cluttered up Teddy's room in this way, I'd hear from her."

"I can't help it," said Lee from the depths of a clothes-press. "I thought I had so little that it wouldn't take me any time to pack but I have been dragging out stuff for the last hour and there is no end to it. Where did I get it all? What do I want with it? How am I going to dispose of it? I feel as if I had nightmare."