“Now, Aunt Lavinia, you see the garden is all growing and blowing, and there are only enough tulips left for the Rookwood jars in the library,” Sylvia said, stepping back to look at the table, “and a few for us to wear.  Lilies-of-the-valley for you, pink tulips for you, Mrs. Evan,—­they will soon close, and look like pointed rosebuds,—­yellow daffies to match my gown, and you must choose for the two men I do not know.  I’ll take a tuft of these primroses for Mr. Bradford, and play they grew wild.  We always joked him about these flowers at college until ‘The Primrose’ came to be his nickname among ourselves.  Why?

“One day when he was lecturing to us on Wordsworth, and reading examples of different styles and metres, he finished a rather sentimental phrase with

“’A primrose by a river’s brim
A yellow primrose was to him
And it was nothing more.’

“Suddenly, the disparity between the bigness of the reader and the slimness of the verse overcame me, and catching his eye, I laughed aloud.  Of course, the entire class followed in a chorus, which he, catching the point, joined heartily.  It sounds silly now, but it seemed very funny at the time; and it is such little points that make events at school, and even at college.”

“Mr. Bradford told me some news this morning,” said Miss Lavinia, walking admiringly about the table as she spoke.  “He is Professor Bradford, of the University, not merely the women’s college now, or rather will be at the beginning of the next term.”

“That is pleasant news.  I wonder how old Professor Jameson happened to step out, and why none of the Rockcliffe girls have written me about it.”

“He did not tell me any details; said that they would keep until to-night.  We met him in the street this morning, immediately after we left you,” and Miss Lavinia gave a brief account of our shopping.

“That sounds quite like him.  All his air castles seemed to be built about his mother and the old farm at Pine Ridge.  He has often told me how easy it would be to get back the house to the colonial style, with wide fireplaces, that it was originally, and he always had longings to be in a position to coax his mother to come to Northbridge for the winter, and keep a little apartment for him.  Perhaps he will be able to do both now.”

Sylvia spoke with keen but quite impersonal interest, and looking at her I began to wonder if here might not, after all, be the comrade type of woman in whose existence I never before believed,—­feminine, sympathetic, buoyant, yet capable of absolutely rational and unemotional friendship with a man within ten years of her own age.  But after all it is common enough to find the first half of such a friendship, it is the unit that is difficult; and I had then had no opportunity of seeing the two together.

We went upstairs together, and lingered by the fire in Miss Lavinia’s sitting room before going to make ready for dinner.  The thaw of the morning was again locked by ice, and it was quite a nippy night for the season.  I, revelled mentally in the fact that my dinner waist was crimson in colour, and abbreviated only in the way of elbow sleeves, and the pretty low corn-coloured crepe bodice that I saw Lucy unpacking from Sylvia’s suit case quite made me shiver.