Over the tea and cakes the clouds gradually dispersed, and when Virginia went to her room that night, after declaring that she had had a perfectly lovely time, Grace took from her writing case the note that Miriam had found, and tore it into small pieces.  She needed no evidence against Virginia.

CHAPTER XXIV

SAYING GOOD-BYE TO THEIR FRESHMAN YEAR

The few intervening days that lay between commencement and home were filled with plenty of pleasant excitement.  There were calls to make, farewell spreads and merry-makings to attend, and momentous questions concerning what to leave behind and what to take home to be decided.  The majority of the girls at Wayne Hall had asked for their old rooms for the next year.  Two sophomores had succeeded in getting into Wellington House.  One poor little freshman, having studied too hard, had brought on a nervous affection and was obliged to give up her course at Overton for a year at least.  There was also one other sophomore whose mother was coming to the town of Overton to live and keep house for her daughter in a bungalow not far from the college.

It now lacked only two days until the end of the spring term, and what to pack and when to pack it were the burning questions of the hour.

“There will be room for four more freshmen here next year,” remarked Grace, as she appeared from her closet, her arms piled high with skirts and gowns.  Depositing them on the floor, she dropped wearily into a chair.  “I don’t believe I can ever make all those things go into that trunk.  I have all my clothes that I brought here last fall, and another lot that I brought back at Christmas, and still some others that I acquired at Easter.  If I had had a particle of forethought I would have taken home a few things each trip.  Don’t dare to leave the house until this trunk is packed, Anne, for I shall need you to help me sit on it.  If our combined weight isn’t enough, we’ll invite Elfreda and Miriam in to the sitting.  I am perfectly willing to perform the same kind offices for them.  Oh, dear, I hate to begin.  I’m wild to go home, but I can’t help feeling sad to think my freshman joys are over.  It seems to me that the two most important years in college are one’s freshman and senior years.

“Being a freshman is like beginning a garden.  One plants what one considers the best seeds, and when the little green shoots come up, it’s terribly hard to make them live at all.  It is only by constant care that they are made to thrive and all sorts of storms are likely to rise out of a clear sky and blight them.  Some of the seeds one thought would surely grow the fastest are total disappointments, while others that one just planted to fill in, fairly astonish one by their growth, but if at the end of the freshman year the garden looks green and well cared for, it’s safe to say it will keep on growing through the sophomore and junior years and bloom at the end of four years.  That’s the peculiarity about college gardens.  One has to begin to plant the very first day of the freshman year to be sure of flowers when the four years are over.