"Shall I ever be glad to leave it all?" she asked herself. "Wellington and the girls and the hard work and the play?"
How were they to bear parting, the old crowd, after four years of intimate association? Did Judy love it as she did, or would she not rather feel like a bird loosed from a cage when at last the gates were opened and she could fly away. But Molly felt sure that Nance would feel the pangs of homesickness for Wellington when the good old days were over.
All these half-melancholy thoughts crowded through Molly's mind while Judy thrummed the guitar and Nance, busy soul, arranged the books on the new white book shelves.
Presently the other girls would come trailing in, the "old guard," to talk over the events of that busy first day: Margaret Wakefield, bursting with opinions about politics and woman's suffrage; pretty Jessie Lynch, and the Williams sisters whose dark lustrous eyes seemed to see beyond the outer crust of things. Last of all, after a discreet interval, would come a soft, deprecating tap at the door, and Otoyo Sen, most charming of little Japanese ladies, with a beaming, apologetic smile, would glide into the room on her marshmallow soled slippers.
"Everybody's late," exclaimed Judy, unexpectedly breaking in on her friend's preoccupation. "I do wish my trunk were unpacked. I can't bear to be unsettled. It's the most disagreeable thing about the first day of college."
"Why don't you go unpack it, then, lazybones?" asked Nance, a trifle sternly. As much as she loved her care-free Judy, she never quite approved of her.
"How little you understand my nature, Nance," answered Judy, reproachfully.
"I know that people who pride themselves on having the artistic temperament never like to unpack trunks or do any kind of so-called menial work, for that matter. But there can be just as much art in unpacking a trunk as in a painting a picture——"
"Ho, ho!" interrupted Judy, who loved these discussions with her serious-minded friend. "How would you like to engage for all your life in the immortal work of unpacking trunks?"
"I never said anything about doing it always—" broke in Nance, when the argument was brought to a sudden end by the arrival of the other girls.