“Fine!” said Billy.

“Fine!  Why, Billy Norton, I never went to a banquet in my life.  I don’t know what forks to use, and I never saw a finger bowl!”

Amos grinned.  “What’s the use of being a scholar, if that sort of thing bothers you?”

“I might get a book on etiquette and polish up,” said Lydia, thoughtfully.  “I’ll get one to-morrow, and practise on the family.”

Amos groaned, but to no avail.  Lydia borrowed a book on etiquette from the library and for a week Amos ate his supper with an array of silver and kitchen-ware before him that took his appetite away.  He rebelled utterly at using the finger bowls, which at breakfast were porridge dishes.  Lizzie, however, was apt and read the book so diligently while Lydia was in class that she was able to correct Lydia as well as Amos at night.

Ma Norton had insisted on making Lydia a white mull graduation dress.  She would not let either Lizzie or Lydia help her.  She had been daughter-hungry all her life and since she made her own wedding gown, no bit of sewing had given her the satisfaction that this did.

So it was that Lydia, wearing the mull under her scholar’s gown, and with the precepts of the book on etiquette in her mind, attended the Scholars’ banquet, timidly but not with the self-consciousness that she might otherwise have felt.

Billy left her at the door of the hall and Professor Willis took her in to dinner.  There were only two other women there, but Lydia did not mind.

“You never told me,” said Willis, after Lydia had safely chosen her salad fork, “what you’ve done about the three hundred and twenty acres.”

Lydia looked up at him quickly.  She had been dreading this moment for some time.

“I’m going to give up John Levine’s claim on it, and enter on it as a homesteader.”

“But what an undertaking!” exclaimed Willis.

“I’ll not go alone,” said Lydia gently.  “Billy Norton will go with me.”

Willis turned white, and laid down his salad fork.  Lydia turned her head away, then looked back, her eyes a little tear dimmed.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Don’t be,” he answered, after a moment.  “You never did a kinder thing than to tell me this now—­before—­not but what it would have been too late, had you told me two years ago.”

“Oh, I am so sorry,” repeated Lydia miserably.

“But you mustn’t be!  Besides, you and I are both scholars and scholars are always philosophers!”

He was silent for the rest of the banquet, in spite of his philosophy.  But when he was called on for his toast, which was the last one, he rose coolly enough, and began steadily,

“My toast is to all scholars, everywhere, but also to one scholar in particular.  It is to one who was born with a love of books, to one who made books—­good books—­so intimate a part of her life that she made poverty a blessing, who combined books and living so deeply that she read her community aright, when others failed to do so, to one who is a scholar in the truest sense of the word—­a book lover with a vision.  I drink to the youngest and sweetest scholar of us all!” and he bowed to Lydia.