"Take it down to Mike to keep for the sophomore class. We are going to make it our mascot. It will be a real joy to have a kitten to borrow once in a while. I am so much obliged to whoever sent it, for it was a lovely surprise, you know. By the way, I wish you would thank your friends for the excellent caramels they sent us; we enjoyed them so very much."
Jessie gave rather a sickly smile. "I know one thing," she said. "Next year we shall be more careful in selecting our room."
"So I would be," returned Janet suavely. "One has such a lot to learn about everything the first year. One very important thing is to correct wrong impressions about rules. It is an awful thing to be brought up before the faculty for misdemeanors, I have heard. I'd advise you to remember that."
With which parting piece of advice, she nodded to Jessie and continued her way to the lower floor, leaving the freshman scared and abashed.
Mike readily consented to take charge of the kitten, and scarcely a day passed but it was borrowed by one sophomore or another, so that its lines fell in pleasant places.
It was a long time, however, before Janet heard the last of the joke, for the freshmen, for weeks, made it a point of waylaying her in the halls and saying: "Miss Ferguson, I hear you have a kitten. How did you come by it?"
But Janet was finally a match for them, for she would forestall them by saying: "I hear you freshmen are very fond of caramels; why don't you get some of your friends to send you some?"
And so at last, the subject of cats and caramels was dropped. In some way the "gilded youth" were warned not to trust their offerings to so uncertain a means of transport as a string let down from a window, for not only did wily sophs lie in wait for them, but there was an added danger of discovery by persons less ready to keep their counsel than these same sophs.
However, Janet concluded, after this experience, that life would be a little more independent if she could give up dormitory life another year. And one day late in the semester, as she sat with Mascot curled up in her lap, she remarked to Edna: "Next year I mean to give up Hopper Hall, and go to a private house. Will you join me, Ted?"
"Why, of course, if you like; or rather, if papa and mamma agree. They think I am better off here than anywhere else."