Dolly's College Experiences

by Mabel Cronise Jones

“He has not told me anything at all, Dolly, but I imagine that he has spoken to Mary.”

“Oh, Mother, couldn’t he see for himself that Mary cares nothing for him? The poor boy!”

“I am sorry for him, dear; I feared that he would speak too soon, but it was best to say nothing. Fred will not give up easily, and in time Mary may come to appreciate him. Now she does not give a thought to anything beyond her plans and her work.”

“I do not believe that she will ever change,” and Dolly went to her room with her own new joy tinged with sadness as she thought of Fred’s disappointment.

* * * * *

It is more than two years later. The class of ’09 had been holding a reunion in New York. A number of the members lived in that city, and others were within easy access of it. So Constance had proposed that there should be semi-annual reunions at her home for as many as could come. Several of these reunions had been held now, and the girls enjoyed them, perhaps even more than the yearly gatherings at Westover during Commencement week, when they did not really have time to compare notes and gossip, as they liked to do, over all the little happenings of the past year.

This time there seemed even more news than usual to be talked over and discussed. Sarah Weston would sail the next week for India as a missionary, Grace Egle was studying medicine, Ellen Terence and Kate Seaton were doing work on New York newspapers, and were doing it well, too. Margaret had run off for a day from the well-known college in which she had a good position; Mary was there, too, but after the holidays she would go west, for she had accepted the chair of Biology in a new woman’s college just started there. One of the girls was singing in a fashionable church, though, when she used that adjective, Beth protested vigorously.

“I think that it is horrible to speak of a fashionable church. I know that it is often done, but a church that merits such an adjective cannot be a church in the true sense of the term.”

There had been some lively talk on the subject after Beth’s remark, and the girls had enjoyed it, for it seemed like the old days at Westover, when they were constantly picking each other up and holding conversational tilts.

Another of the class was doing lyceum work as a public reader. Still another had opened a kindergarten, and many more, like Beth and Dolly, were filling quietly and efficiently the little niches at home which sadly needed them.