Following the gymnasium entertainment came a few days of examinations, then a day of hurried packing, before the scattering of five hundred boys and girls to their homes for a week. Sarah was to go home; she had been thinking for a long time of the snowdrops which would be in bloom on the south side of the house, and the daffodils which must be poking up through the earth. But now at the last moment, she did not seem to care. If they would only let her go to bed and sleep and sleep! She feared that some day she might drop over asleep where she stood, and frighten Miss Ellingwood and Ethel and Gertrude. How absurd it would be to fall asleep in the middle of the day! Mabel Thorn and Ellen Ritter often took naps after dinner, but Sarah had not slept in the daytime since she was a baby.
If she had been a little older or a little less forgiving, she might have been slower to accept the friendship of Ethel and Gertrude, offered at once in many penitent and friendly ways. But almost immediately the hardness went out of her heart and the tremor from her voice when she saw them or spoke to them. Finally she felt the same soft, happy thrill of relief that she had felt when Aunt 'Liza appeared with her gift of cake and schnitz.
"Nobody is cross over me, and I am not cross over anybody," she said to herself.
And in a day or two she did tumble over as she had feared. Ethel and Gertrude were waiting for her on the steps. She was going with them to the shop to order viands for a feast to be held in their room that evening. Miss Ellingwood had gone walking, and Sarah grew heated and impatient over the fastening of her sailor suit, and the tying of her red scarf.
She did not wait for the elevator, but ran downstairs, jumping over the last step of each flight, and then going more sedately out past the office door. She remembered afterwards that she had felt a little dizzy, and that she had once put out her hand to steady herself. She saw Professor Minturn coming toward her on his way to the faculty meeting in the office, and she tried to straighten up and bow to him. Instead, she pitched forward at his feet.
In one step, Professor Minturn was beside her. He expected to see her scramble up, red-faced and embarrassed.
"Oh, I hope you haven't hurt yourself!" he began to say.
But Sarah did not move.
"Miss Wenner!" he said, in a tone which brought Dr. Ellis and the Secretary and Eugene hurrying from the office. By that time, he had lifted her from the floor.
"She seems to have fainted," he said.