“I can at any rate.  And did you see Miss Allen stare when you called me Bobbie?”

“Yes, but many of the girls have taken that up.  It goes so well with your bobbed hair.  Don’t mind do you?”

“Not a bit.  Call me Pickles if you like—­that would go well with my disposition.”  Shirley was hurriedly gathering up books and papers from the little table both girls used as a desk in Sally’s room under the eaves.  “Do you realize we have spent one hour talking?  It’s all very well for you, Kitten; you can have a recitation prepared or write a theme as easily as I can fail.  If I had your talent I would never leave this college without an A.B.,” she declared emphatically.

“I wonder, Bobbie, did we make a gigantic mistake.  If we had not been so influenced by Dol Vin’s idea, perhaps we might have managed some way without all that hateful pretense.  I can’t help blaming myself dreadfully.  And to think Miss Allen is so kind without being patronizing—–­”

“Look here, Kit,” demanded Shirley.  “I know you could have come here without that plan, but what could have put me through?  Nothing but the scholarship.  So please don’t be getting morbid.  We may have been foolish, but we did what seemed right, and Dol Vin was a mighty convincing friend, I’ll admit.  The question now is the dance, then Ted, and then—­I don’t know, maybe I’ll escape in the night,” and the old time rebel spirit danced in the sharp, dark eyes.

Sally piled up her notes and followed Shirley out to recitation.  It was not easy now to finish the task which at first seemed almost alluring.  It was like trying to uproot some gentle affection to plan to actually leave Wellington.

The girls’ secret was spreading poisonous tendrils over every other act and thought; nothing now seemed untouched by that malicious deception, and the very crisis now imminent—­was ugly!  And this was what both had planned and worked for—­to leave Wellington at midyear?

They had not reckoned on the power of girls’ love for girls, and of education’s influence on sentiment.

Sally Howland had been steeling herself against “growing fond of things” and that very repression made her its victim; Shirley Duncan defied these conditions and was punished with a “true case” of the epidemic called Environment.  So that both now seemed all but helpless at the crisis.

A day or two before the dance, when arrangements were running as smoothly as the little lake that dripped through the big grounds of Wellington, a general hike was planned.  Each department, freshmen, sophs, juniors and seniors, arranging to go out tramping over the wonderful hills of upper New York state, touching quarries, testing rocks, hunting nuts and cramming into the one pre-holiday jaunt such various needs of outdoor work as were found in the studies then being under test in all grades and classes.

Thus far it was an open winter; no snow, flurries failing miserably to do more than make the air look pretty for a few minutes, and even brooks had kept up their rippling music, chattering away over rock and rill, blissfully unconscious that Winter’s deathly breath must soon paralyze every little vein and artery into a rigid, frozen crystal surface.