"Now, whenever you want a 'bus, Miss, just ask for Uncle John. That's what they call me."
"Yes," answered the Freshman, gratefully, "I will,—Uncle John."
She passed up the dormitory steps, running awkwardly the gauntlet of experienced eyes scanning the new arrivals. The Theta Gammas wrote her down as material for a quaint little, quiet little dig,—not of sorority interest. One of them ventured that there was an Oxford teacher's Bible and an embroidered mending-case in the shiny valise. Another prophesied that the newcomer would wear her High School graduation-dress to the Freshman reception. These ladies had been at college for three years and their diagnosis was correct.
So Hannah Grant Daly hopped with no unnecessary flapping of wings upon her perch in the Roble dove-cote. The matron put her into 52 with Lillian Arnold, a Sophomore leader of local society. This was "to make things easier for her." Their wedded life lasted three days. It was long after lights when Miss Arnold returned the first night. Hannah had read her chapter and was lying awake, bravely resisting a homesick cry. Her roommate groped in with an animated tale of a Freshman spread on the top floor at which the chief attraction had been oyster cocktails. Pocahontas shuddered. In imagination she detected a faint odor like that from her mother's medicine-closet.
"I'd have asked you to go along with me," apologized Lillian, scrambling into bed without any conventional delay, "but I thought you wouldn't care for such things."
"I hope I never shall," said the new girl, solemnly, and turned her face to the wall.
The following morning while Pocahontas arranged her share of the bureau, the Sophomore draped a tennis net on their wall and fixed in its meshes the trophies of her first year. She was putting a photograph in place when Hannah spoke:
"Who is that, Miss Arnold?"
"That's Jack Smith," answered Lillian; "stunning, isn't he?"
"He's very interesting, I think. He was on the train yesterday. There were ever so many boys to meet him."