“Show her up, please,” and Julia, stepping outside, soon saw Angelina coming up the stairs.
“Why, what brought you so far this cold day, Angelina?” she asked in greeting her.
“Well, Miss Julia,” she replied from the depths of an easy-chair in which she had immediately seated herself, “well, I did have a time getting here. You see I started this morning, and I told my mother not to worry if I didn’t come home to-night. I knew you’d make room for me, and there’s things I want to talk over that I couldn’t write.”
Julia had not heard from the Rosas since the Christmas vacation, when she had spared a day to visit them and take a basket of presents.
“I wasn’t sure that you wanted me to come to Cambridge,” said Angelina. “I don’t remember your ever inviting me, but ever since I heard you were at college I’ve been anxious to see what it was like. I thought that colleges were just for men?”
“Oh, no, for girls, too, in these days.”
“I think I’d like to go to college myself,” said Angelina, with a sidelong glance at Julia, “but I don’t suppose that I’ll have the chance.”
Julia shook her head. “Angelina, you may not go to college, but you know that we wish you to go on with your studies. I am sorry that there is no evening school at Shiloh.”
“That’s just it,” responded Angelina, “that’s just what I wanted to talk about. I don’t feel as if I cared much for Shiloh; it’s terribly quiet there in the winter after the summer people are gone. I can’t seem to think that I want to stay there all the time.”
“Your mother must decide that. Are you not needed at home?” asked Julia weakly, knowing that Mrs. Rosa had very little authority over her children, and that she was only too ready to refer all difficult questions to Julia and Miss South.