For Spring Term is satisfaction. There is enough of it. When its magic first comes to the freshman she thinks there will be eons more of Spring Terms.
But there will not be. Only four of them in a lifetime—during those years when the newness of life is fresh, when the power to respond sings through every girl’s heart its most exultant tune.
A more or less bony livery horse, perked up for spring, with the inevitable runabout, stood before each campus house’s back door in those days.
When his hirers came down from their rooms, they undid the knot about the hitching post and, picking up the reins, slapped them on the beast’s back and careened away, out into the wonderworld their Hampton had become.
Red canoes began to flash across the bright and shallow waters of Paradise.
Rubber-soled shoes slapped their way to the tennis courts, and their wearers sat for hours without any alleviating shade, just to have possession of a court at last for sixty minutes.
“I don’t know what I’ve ever done to deserve it,” said Peggy, leaning on her window-sill beside Katherine, while the two looked out on it all.
“I’ve heard the upperclass girls tell some of our freshmen when they were homesick, ‘Wait till Spring Term.’ Now I understand what they meant,” returned Katherine slowly.
“Oh, room-mate, I am glad I belong to such a world. Wouldn’t it be—wouldn’t it be terrible to have Spring Term come along and be a senior—or an alum?”
“Seniors graduate—I suppose they don’t realize it’s all for the last time—maybe they do, though. But alums!” Katherine caught her arm and pressed it in an odd panic. “Do you suppose we will actually some day be—that?” she asked with a shudder.