So it was that Lydia, wearing the mull under her scholar's gown, and with the precepts of the book on etiquette in her mind, attended the Scholars' banquet, timidly but not with the self-consciousness that she might otherwise have felt.
Billy left her at the door of the hall and Professor Willis took her in to dinner. There were only two other women there, but Lydia did not mind.
"You never told me," said Willis, after Lydia had safely chosen her salad fork, "what you've done about the three hundred and twenty acres."
Lydia looked up at him quickly. She had been dreading this moment for some time.
"I'm going to give up John Levine's claim on it, and enter on it as a homesteader."
"But what an undertaking!" exclaimed Willis.
"I'll not go alone," said Lydia gently. "Billy Norton will go with me."
Willis turned white, and laid down his salad fork. Lydia turned her head away, then looked back, her eyes a little tear dimmed.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be," he answered, after a moment. "You never did a kinder thing than to tell me this now—before—not but what it would have been too late, had you told me two years ago."