Of the next hour and a half Mary Jane didn't have a very clear understanding. There was so much to see that a person just couldn't see and remember it all; and so many folks talking that one couldn't hear everything. But she remembered what she could and saved it up to ask her mother about afterward. There were the old-fashioned red brick buildings on the quadrangle and the stately Tower Court where Hal's friend, Miss Elliott, lived, and the beautiful campus with its lovely old trees that cast an inviting shade over the lawns.
"I'm going to study hard and come here to college," said Alice, after they had completed their trip around the grounds, "I think it would be just wonderful to live here for four years! And just think, Mother," she added, "in five years I'll be coming here!" She looked dreamily over the beautiful place and tried to imagine herself one of the girls in gay sport clothes walking under those very trees.
"I'm coming here too," said Mary Jane, "and I'll be here before so very long, won't I, Mother dear?"
"Before we know it, at the rate you girls are now growing," laughed Mrs. Merrill, "and just think of the fun I'm going to have coming here to 'settle my daughters' when they begin college."
Miss Elliott found them excellent seats where they could watch the dancing, and Mary Jane enjoyed sitting and looking at everything quite as much as being shown around. She thought the dancing wonderful and held her breath with the joy of it as the dancers came gayly down the shaded hill, across the open green and back up the hill again when the dance was over.
"I'll have to learn a lot if I'm going to come here and do all that," she whispered to her mother when the dancers were out of sight behind the greenery that made the background.
"No doubt about that, dear," said Mrs. Merrill, "but just think how much you are learning all the time! By the time you are grown-up as those girls are, you'll be sure to know a lot."
"Has Uncle Hal said anything about tea or anything?" whispered Alice as the groups of people broke up and she guessed that the program was over.
As though they suspected what the girls might be thinking of, Miss Elliott and Hal came up at that minute and Uncle Hal said, "I've just been telling Dorothy that we'll take our quarter of a cup of tea and half a wafer that we could get over there, some other time, and she's agreed to let me take you all to the Inn for real tea. Want to go or doesn't food appeal to you?"
"Um-m," said Alice, trying hard to be really grown-up like Miss Elliott, "I think I could eat a little if you insist."