In a way, Lydia's conscience smote her. She knew that her father was worrying over her attitude on her inheritance, but she continued to avoid the issue with him while the estate was being settled. Lydia was doing heavy work in college. She actually had entered all the classes in dairying possible, while carrying her other college work. And she enjoyed the new work amazingly.
She had not mentioned her purpose to any one of her friends but Billy. Therefore when Professor Willis, showing some Eastern visitors through the dairy building, came upon her washing cream bottles one afternoon, he was rendered entirely speechless for a moment.
Lydia, in a huge white dairy apron and cap, was sluicing the bottles happily, the only girl in a class of a dozen men, when Willis came in, followed by two tall men in eyeglasses.
"Queer, I admit, to find this sort of thing in a college," he was saying, "but decidedly interesting, nevertheless. Well, Miss Dudley, are you—I didn't know—I beg your pardon."
The class, which was working without an instructor, looked up in astonishment. Lydia blushed furiously and the two visitors looked on with obvious interest.
"It's a class in bottle sterilizing," she explained. "It just happens to be my turn."
The look of relief on Willis' face made Lydia angry. She turned her back on him and proceeded to let a cloud of steam envelop her and her bottles.
"The idiot! He thought I was dish-washing for a living, I suppose," she murmured to herself. "What business is it of his, anyhow?"
How Willis got rid of his two guests, he did not say, but half an hour later, when Lydia emerged from the dairy building, he was waiting for her. There was a quiet drizzle of rain, as was usual this Fall, and Lydia was wearing her old coat, with her mortar-board. But it was clear that the professor of Shakespeare did not know what she wore. It was a half mile through the University farm to the street-car and he wanted to re-establish himself with Lydia before some other swain appeared.
"Tell me what this means, Miss Dudley!" he said eagerly as he raised his umbrella to hold it carefully over the mortar-board.