“Such is fame—the fame of an old, a great, and a noble institution of learning!” said the spectacled one, in mock deprecation. “With a foundation laid over half a century in the past, with the most healthful and charming location on the entire Cumberland Mountain for its site; with a corps of instructors second only to those of the richly endowed colleges of the North—correct me, Miss Richardia, if I am not quoting the prospectus accurately—with all these splendid advantages, and with a student body drawn from the oldest and most distinguished families of the South.... Mr. Tregarvon, can it be possible——”
“Spare me!” laughed the victim. “You must remember that I am only a poor, ignorant provincial from Philadelphia, less than a fortnight out of the shell.”
“We are merely trying to impress you properly so that you will think twice before having us arrested for trespass and attempted assassination,” broke in the laughing markswoman. “We may not look it, but we are a majority of the faculty of Highmount College for Young Women. Let me present you to Madame Fortier, Modern Languages; to Miss Longstreet, Art; to Miss Farron, Assistant Mathematics; and to Professor William Wilberforce Hartridge, M.A., Vanderbilt, Higher Mathematics and the Natural Sciences.”
Tregarvon bowed in turn to the Gallic eyebrows, to the artist’s smock, to the red tam-o’-shanter, and shook hands cordially with the M.A., Vanderbilt.
“This is fine, you know; it’s like Robinson Crusoe’s meeting with his rescuers,” he asserted joyously. “This is my first real hearing of the English tongue since I began doing time down yonder in Coalville, with my old ruin of an office-building for a dungeon, and Mrs. Matt Tryon for my jail matron. Is it very far to Highmount College? And may I hope sometime to——”
The three younger women laughed at this, and Madame Fortier hastened to be hospitable.
“We shall be moz’ charm’, Monsieur Tregarvong. I will spik for President Caswell and hees good madame.” But Tregarvon waited for Miss Richardia’s confirmation, which was given unhesitatingly.
“Certainly, you must come, if you can spare the time,” she affirmed. “We were speaking of you, and of the Ocoee prospects, at dinner the other evening, and Doctor Caswell was even then threatening to look you up. I think he said he had met your father in years gone by.”
“I am sure that was exceedingly kind and hospitable—to think of taking the stranger up before he had made himself known,” said Tregarvon, with the hearth-warmed exile’s glow at his heart. They were moving over to the rifle-rest, and he had fallen a step or two behind with Miss Richardia. “You would have to be a castaway in a strange land yourself to know how good it feels to be counted in.”
“I have been both—the castaway and the counted-in,” she returned. “I was four years in Boston; two of them without knowing a single soul outside of a limited little Conservatory circle.”