“Dan! It can’t be so bad if Mrs Reeves is willing to go. She accepted in a minute. I heard her myself.”
“She goes everywhere, to the wildest fellows’ rooms. She has her own ideas, no doubt, but I don’t profess to understand them.” He hesitated, puckering his brows, and looking at her with dark, questioning eyes. “I have no authority over you, Darsie, but I wish—”
“Ralph saved my life,” interrupted Darsie simply.
Dan looked at her sharply, stared with scrutinising attention at her face, but spoke no further word of protest. He evidently realised, as Darsie did herself, that it would be a mean act to reject the friendship of a man who had wrought so great a service.
Half an hour later the two girls slowly wended their way past the tower gateway of Trinity, past Caius, with its twinkling lights, stately King’s, and modest Catherine’s, to the homelike shelter of their own dear Newnham.
“Well!” cried Hannah, breaking a long silence, “you had a big success and I had—not! But you’re not a bit happier than I, that I can see. Men are poor, blind bats. I prefer my own sex; they are much more discriminating, and when they like you—they like you, and there’s no more shilly-shally. Those men never know their own minds!”