“I dread a little,” Betsey confessed at last; “it is so new and strange and different. I wanted so much to come here, but now, just at the last minute, I would be glad to go home again.”
David nodded.
“I feel the same way,” he agreed. “But I think anything big enough to be worth while is bound to be dreaded a little too. The feeling won’t last long. Well, the bell is ringing, we must go on, I think.”
They said good-by and turned to go in their opposite directions. Beyond the vine-covered arch a great bell was swinging in one of those same towers that they had watched across the valley, a silvery, sweet-voiced bell, for all the greatness of its sound. Betsey walked forward, surrounded more and more by hurrying companions, a few of them girls from her school whom she knew, many, many of them strangers, but all looking as though they might some day be friends. It was a close-pressing throng as she came to the entrance of the main building where she must go in, so that she had to mount slowly, step by step, to the door. She could look back, down the straight walk, under the arch, through the great gate opposite to where, far beyond, a similar group was pressing into a similar doorway. For a fleeting second she felt a little lonely, a little homesick, before such sensations were carried away in the rush of excited thought of all that was in store for her. She was glad that she could still see David’s red head from afar and that it was the last thing of which she caught a glimpse, just as the hastening crowd swept her across the threshold and into a new world.
THE END
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