As they wended their way homeward across the dusky campus, they were very silent; when Pauline spoke once, it was only to say, "I am sorry I called her the Cynic."
And Charlotte, watching their dark receding forms as she leaned from her open window, hoped that she hadn't been preaching. It was the old, old antithesis between enthusiasm and experience; and after all there was much to be said for enthusiasm. Those two youngsters had brought something out of their mischance, if it was only their liking for each other. "I wish I were a freshman again," sighed Charlotte to the stars.
Cora Armistead Hardy, '99.
[A REMINISCENCE]
We had met, after two years or so out in the "wide, wide world" of which we had sung so dolefully, the last weeks of senior year. I discovered that Evelyn had substituted soft "fluffs" for the stiff collars she had clung to tenaciously through four years of college, and she admitted that after the first shock she quite liked the new way I did my hair. Later she also admitted that she made a practice of carrying a parasol, or even of wearing a hat, when it was excessively sunny. Emboldened by the confession, I ventured to produce some embroidery and went to work as if such femininity had always been my pose. Then we talked, and exchanged various bits of news about the members of the class who had wandered so far since our separation.
"Wasn't it sad about Janet?" I asked at last. And then as Evelyn kept silent, I went on, "you knew, didn't you?—She died last November just a little while after her engagement was announced. It was typhoid fever. I thought you knew, of course."
"Yes, I knew," said Evelyn, and went on examining the bookcase.