“Now, Jennie Wren, you must admit that gym never had any charms for you and it’s a great relief to give it up.”
“Of course she must,” put in another girl. “The only exercise Jennie Wren ever takes is to hop about on the lawn and prune her feathers.”
“Never!” cried Jennie Wren. “I never wear them, not even quills. I belong to the S. P. C. A.”
“Is there much out-of-door life here?” asked Molly Brown, of a tall, somewhat older girl sitting opposite her.
“This new girl may have timid manners,” thought Nance Oldham; “but she is not afraid to talk to strangers. I suppose that’s the friendly Southern way. She hasn’t been in Wellington a quarter of an hour and she has already made three friends,—Caroline and the station-master and me. And now she’s getting on famously with that older girl. What I like about her is that she isn’t a bit self-conscious and she takes it for granted everybody’s going to be kind.”
“Oh, yes, lots of it,” the older girl was saying to Molly kindly. “If you have a taste for that kind of thing, you may indulge it to your heart’s content. There is a splendid swimming pool attached to the gym, and there are golf links, of course. You know they are quite famous in this part of the world. Then, there are the tennis courts, and we’ll still have some canoeing on the lake before the weather gets too cold and later glorious skating. Besides all that, there are perfectly ripping walks for miles around. The college has several Saturday afternoon walking clubs.”
“But don’t these things interfere with—with lectures?” asked Molly, who was really quite ignorant regarding college life, although she had passed her entrance examinations without any conditions whatever.
The older girl laughed pleasantly. She was not good looking, but she had a fine face and Molly liked her immensely.
“Oh, no, you’ll find there’s plenty of time for everything you want to get in, because most things have their season, and most girls specialize, anyhow. A golf fiend is seldom a tennis fiend, and there are lots of walking fiends who don’t like either.”
Molly’s liking for this big girl and her grave, fine face increased as the conversation progressed. She had a most reassuring, kindly manner and Molly noticed that the other girls treated her with a kind of deferential respect and called her “Miss Stewart.” She learned afterward that Miss Stewart was a senior and a member of the “Octogons,” the most coveted society in the University. She led in all the athletic sports, was quite a wonderful musician and had composed an operetta for her class and most of the music for the class songs. It was whispered also that she was very rich, though no one would ever have guessed this secret from Mary Stewart herself, who was careful never to allude to money and dressed very simply and plainly.