She had not mentioned her purpose to any one of her friends but Billy.  Therefore when Professor Willis, showing some Eastern visitors through the dairy building, came upon her washing cream bottles one afternoon, he was rendered entirely speechless for a moment.

Lydia, in a huge white dairy apron and cap, was sluicing the bottles happily, the only girl in a class of a dozen men, when Willis came in, followed by two tall men in eyeglasses.

“Queer, I admit, to find this sort of thing in a college,” he was saying, “but decidedly interesting, nevertheless.  Well, Miss Dudley, are you—­I didn’t know—­I beg your pardon.”

The class, which was working without an instructor, looked up in astonishment.  Lydia blushed furiously and the two visitors looked on with obvious interest.

“It’s a class in bottle sterilizing,” she explained.  “It just happens to be my turn.”

The look of relief on Willis’ face made Lydia angry.  She turned her back on him and proceeded to let a cloud of steam envelop her and her bottles.

“The idiot!  He thought I was dish-washing for a living, I suppose,” she murmured to herself.  “What business is it of his, anyhow?”

How Willis got rid of his two guests, he did not say, but half an hour later, when Lydia emerged from the dairy building, he was waiting for her.  There was a quiet drizzle of rain, as was usual this Fall, and Lydia was wearing her old coat, with her mortar-board.  But it was clear that the professor of Shakespeare did not know what she wore.  It was a half mile through the University farm to the street-car and he wanted to re-establish himself with Lydia before some other swain appeared.

“Tell me what this means, Miss Dudley!” he said eagerly as he raised his umbrella to hold it carefully over the mortar-board.

“It looks as though it meant rain, to me,” replied Lydia, shortly.

Willis gave a little gasp.  “Oh!  I beg your pardon!”

His chagrin made Lydia ashamed of herself.  “I don’t see why you should be so shocked at my trying to learn something useful,” she said.

“Oh, but I’m not!  Nothing that you could do would shock me!  You’ve got a good reason, for you’re the most sensible girl I ever met.  And that’s what I’m keen about, the reason.”

“The reason?” Lydia stared at the dripping woodland through which they were making their way.  “I’m not just sure I had a reason.  I don’t want to teach.  I do love farming.  I don’t see why a woman can’t learn dairy work as well as a man.”

“You’re the only girl doing it, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but what difference does that make?  The boys are fine to me.”

“I don’t know that that surprises me any,” Willis smiled down at the pink profile at his shoulder.  “Well, and then what?”

“Then a dairy farm, if Dad and I can rent the makings of one.”

“But you have plenty of land, haven’t you?  Levine left all his property to you, I understand.”