"Why?"
I didn't answer for a moment, and she went on,
"But I know why—you think me very light and frivolous, do you not, Mavis?"
"It would be difficult," I answered cautiously, "to imagine you as a nun!"
"They are good women," she said, and was silent.
Suddenly I realized that I knew very little more about this girl than I had known on the boat coming down to Havana, and yet, I had been with her almost constantly ever since.
"Didn't you care for college?" I inquired, rather diffidently.
Her great eyes lighted up.
"It was wonderful—in some ways—" she said slowly, "so many girls, of all classes, gathered together. At first I could not understand. At home, you know, one is very careful whom one knows. It is changing a little now. I remember I was scandalized, my first months at college, to find that the President of the Senior class was a waitress in one of the campus houses—actually waiting on the table! It was too incredible! I wrote home, and Mother begged Father to send for me at once. She was even more shocked than I! But Father laughed, she said, and told her it would do me good. He said it was high time that a little of my American blood came to the fore. Later I learned that this girl, the Senior President, had practically worked her way through the four years of college. She was the daughter of a very poor man—a peasant, we would call him. And yet there was hardly a girl in that great college who would not have given everything she had for the respect and admiration and love which that quiet, plain-featured girl had won and held from students and faculty alike."
"You too?" I asked.