"But come, dear Jean, if you love me, for I am very lonesome, with absolutely nobody but Neva and her mother to divert my mind."
Poor little Neva! I must not wind up this chapter without some little word about her, for there is going to be only one more chapter after this, and there will be no room for Neva in that. This final word may be written next week—it may not be written until a whole year has passed, but whenever it is it will be the last, for I know that if Mammy Lou's definition of the period is correct it will wind up the age of Eve.
But Neva! We left her a lovelorn lass grieving over the perfidies of Hiram, the fickle. We find her again a college girl, breathing academic atmosphere from the tassel of her mortar-board down to the rubber heel of her "gym" shoes. She cares for nothing but school, and the sororities therein. She knows all the places up in the city where one is most likely to come across the college boys one desires most to see; and the class of ices that take the longest time to consume while one is sitting watching these boys pass by. She sometimes does not know the name of a certain desirable young man, but she always knows the name of his high-sounding Greek letter brotherhood.
"She don't talk about nothing but 'frats' and 'spats' and things like that," her mother one time complained after a brief visit from Neva. "And she calls some of her mates by the curiousest names I ever heard. There's one she likes a good deal that she says is a new Phi Chi; and another one that she has to look to some because she's a 'old Tau!'"
"The stage has to be passed through," mother said to Mrs. Sullivan comfortingly, "for it's as certain and as harmless as chicken-pox."
But Mammy Lou takes a much more serious view of Neva's collegiate career and high-flown talk.
"Education ain't no good for girls," she often declares emphatically, "for it spoils their powers of emmanuel labor. You can just as shore count on a educated girl makin' a lazy wife as you can count on damp weather makin' a baby's hair curl an' a ol' woman's feet hurt!"
CHAPTER XVII
MAY DAY