Chapter I
ALISON'S WONDERFUL LAMP
"Mother, isn't there any way for me to go back?"
It was the first of June, and Alison Fair, just returned home for vacation at the end of her Freshman year, found herself confronted with the staggering knowledge that she could not return to Briarwood to finish her college course, so well and happily begun.
It was her mother who told her, breaking the hard news as gently as she could, that the pressure of hard times and financial stress made it impossible for her father to think of sending her back in the fall. She told it very tenderly and lovingly, making it clear that only stern necessity compelled them to deny her the opportunity; but the tenderness could not alter the hard fact.
"You are not more disappointed than we are, darling," she said. "I would not have told you so soon, but it would be worse if I would leave you under the impression that you can return to Briarwood College. You will be brave, and try not to distress your father by showing your disappointment too much. I know how hard it is, dear. But be patient, and perhaps some way will open. You are only sixteen, you can afford to wait a little."
Alison swallowed the lump in her throat and said nothing. Wait—yes—but then she could not go on with her class—with Polly and Evelyn and Joan and the rest. And next year they would be Sophomores—and the fun and study would go on, and she would not be there; she would be out of it all. No other girls would be just the same as those girls, her chums of the Freshman year. And then she asked her one despairing question:
"Mother, isn't there any way for me to go back?"