“We’d better agree to have dinner or supper here if we don’t want to get back to Williamstown after all the food in the place has been eaten by those hungry college boys,” suggested Mrs. Emerson.

Mr. Emerson took a hasty glance at the setting sun.

“You never spoke a truer word, my dear,” applauded her husband, “though this is vacation and the boys won’t be there!  Still, I’m as hungry as a bear.  Let’s have our evening meal, whatever it proves to be, in Bennington.”

They were all hungry enough to think the plan one of the best that their leader had offered for some time, so it was only after what turned out to be supper that they went back to Williamstown.

In the moonlight the towers of the college buildings glimmered mysteriously through the trees, and the girls went to bed happy in the promise of what the morning was going to bring them.

Ethel Brown was sorry that there were no students to be seen on the grounds when they wandered about the next morning, for she would have liked to see what sort of boys they were, and, if she liked their looks, have suggested to Tom or James that they come here to college amid such lovely surroundings.  She liked it better than Amherst but Ethel Blue preferred that compact little village, and Dorothy clung to her deep-seated affection for Cambridge.

“After all, our Club boys have their plans all made so we don’t need to get excited over these colleges,” decided Ethel Brown; “and I’m glad they’re all going to different ones because when they graduate we’ll have invitations to three separate class-days and other festivities.”

“What a perfectly beautiful tower,” exclaimed Dorothy.

“It’s the chapel.  That light-colored stone is superb, isn’t it!”

“Some of these other buildings look as old as some of the oldy-old Harvard ones.”

“They can’t be anywhere near as old.  This college wasn’t founded until 1793.”

“That’s old enough to give it a settled-down air in spite of these handsome new affairs.  There must be lovely walks about here.”

“Hills almost as big as mountains to climb.  But the boys don’t have any girls to call on the way the Amherst boys do, with the Smith girls and the Mt.  Holyoke girls just a little ride away.”

“Perhaps they’d rather have mountains,” remarked Ethel Brown wisely.

As the college was not in session Mr. Emerson was not able to see any of the records that he had hoped to look over to search for his brother’s name, and as almost all of the professors were out of town, he could not question any of the older men of the place as to their recollection of him.  He was quite willing, therefore, to take a comparatively early train for Albany.

They arrived early enough to go over the Capitol, seated at the head of a broad but precipitous street.  It was very unlike the stern simplicity of the Massachusetts State House, but they amused themselves by saying that at least the two buildings had one part of their decoration in common.  In Albany the tops of the columns were carved with fruits and flowers, all to be found in the United States.  In Boston a local product, the codfish, held a position of honor over the desk of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.