"Yes," said the Freshman, "but what do they do?"
"Oh, get out and fight somehow,—I don't know just how,—something about tying up. Only another way of wasting time, Hannah," and the Junior plunged back into her Livy.
At breakfast Pocahontas heard Lillian Arnold tell about going over to the baseball diamond to see the Sophomores lying tied up beside the backstop, and what a joke it was on her own class and what a ridiculous figure Jack Smith had made in the coils of a Freshman's trunk-rope, with his face and hair all grimy with perspiration and dust, and that laundry agent, Mason, piled on top of him. Hannah left the table in secret excitement. Between recitations that morning she met Pete Halleck, a classmate from her own high school; bursting with pride, he took her up to the Row to show their very own class numerals shining high on the tank, and she realized vaguely that this was a thing of which she, too, was a part. There grew within her a longing to reach out a little toward the big, full life of the college, to know something of the men and women who lived it. All this was very wrong, she told herself, for she had come here to study hard. She had only two years in which to fit herself to teach. Here was the precious book-knowledge for which she had hungered and pinched so long. It must not be neglected, ever so little; but the enthusiasm of the boy with her was infectious. In her soul she took issue with the views of her room-mate, fortified as they were by the approval of Professor Grind.
In this rebellious mood she read on the Hall bulletin-board a notice of the reception to be given to new students by the Christian Associations. Here was a chance to satisfy that wicked craving without too great concession, for of course there would be no dancing and the auspices were so favorable. She spoke about it to Katherine Graham, a Junior, who was in Lillian Arnold's "set," to be sure, but who had put her arm around the homesick little Freshman one soft evening after dinner when the girls were strolling before the Hall, and had drawn her down the walk toward the Ninety-five Oak. Katherine was a fine, frank girl whose talk about the University and her love for the campus and its life stirred the new girl's pulses. She could listen with unguarded eagerness to this Junior because she knew her to be a student. Pocahontas slipped her arm wistfully 'round her friend's waist. To room with Miss Graham would have been perfect happiness.
"Of course you'll go," declared Katherine, when she had heard the Freshman's confidence regarding the reception. "It's slow, sometimes, but you'll meet the people you want to know."
So out came the plain graduation-dress, folded carefully away since the night she read the valedictory, three months ago; she sewed a rip in the gloves saved from the same occasion, and she took out the fan which her grandmother had given her, a wonderful fan she had considered it until she saw a few of Lillian's.
In the gymnasium where glistening bamboo and red geraniums screened the chest-weights along the walls, and feathery branches of pepper climbed luxuriantly over the inclined ladders, she found the crowd characteristic of this occasion,—the Freshman men at one end, the Freshman girls at the other, and between them a neutral zone of old students chatting gayly, oblivious of the purpose of the affair. Oh, but the reception committee! Save for these indefatigable martyrs, the Freshman sexes might have gazed wistfully at each other across the lines of upper class-men until the lights dipped and never been able to bow on the Quad next day. Important-looking persons with silk badges and worried faces circulated in a grim endeavor to "mix things up." One of these wild-eyed people would dash into the crowd and haul some struggling upper class-man over to the feminine section. With his victim in tow, he would open conversation feverishly:
"Name, please?"
"Miss Newcome."