“Social frivolities!” repeated Jane; “but half the good of the place is its social life. You won’t get the benefit you ought to derive from a residence at St. Wode’s unless you take up the social as well as the learned side of the life.”
“I don’t understand you,” said Marjorie, knitting her pretty brows.
“I must try and explain. I see by Miss Gilroy’s face that she does.”
Leslie nodded and smiled.
“One of the many benefits of coming to college is to strengthen the social side of one’s character,” said Jane. “When Miss Frere or Miss Maple ask you to tea, they will discourse much on that point. A college girl ought to have wider sympathies, and to be less selfish all round, than a girl who knows only the ordinary home life. Oh, I have not a word to say against home girls, but certainly college life does strengthen one. Now, here we have heaps of opportunities; we know so many girls, we enter into their lives, we have a delightful feeling of comradeship.
The wide outside world, which we get a glimpse of from our own dear little paradise, is most strengthening to our characters. You ask some of the older girls here what they think of St. Wode’s. They will tell you that it is a paradise, an oasis. We are all happy; devoid of care. And the hockey and tennis clubs, and the boating club—they are all so charming that we cannot but have a gay time. There are twenty boats belonging to St. Wode’s College; and on the long summer afternoons we go up the river a good distance, and very often do our work under the trees; so you can imagine how jolly everything is. But of course there are certain rules. No girl can belong to the boating club, for instance, unless she can swim in fifty feet of water.”
“I can stand that test,” said Marjorie eagerly, “and I should rather like to be in a boat. Eileen and I have rowed a good deal on the sea since we were quite children.”
“Can you swim, Miss Gilroy?” asked Jane.
“I am afraid I cannot,” replied Leslie; “but I don’t think I am much of a coward, and can soon learn,” she added. “You see I have spent all my life in London, and have not had a chance of learning.”
“Oh, if you are a London girl you ought to have courage for anything! Then, besides the boating club, we have our bicycle clubs, and our debating society, and our dramatic society. Oh, yes, it is a very full life, and those derive most benefit from the college who enter into it in its divers branches as much as possible.”