Tea was the convivial meal of the day.  To this the girls invited outside friends and acquaintances, and, as a rule, they always took it in their own rooms.

Dinner was at half-past six, and from half-past seven to half-past nine was usually the time when the different clubs and societies met.

There was a regularity and yet a freedom about the life; invisible bounds were prescribed, beyond which no right-minded or conscientious girl cared to venture, but the rules were really very few.  Students might visit their friends in Kingsdene and receive them at the college.  They might entertain them at luncheon or dinner or at tea in their own rooms at a fixed charge, and provided the friends left at a certain hour, and the girls themselves asked for leave of absence when they wished to remain out, and mentioned the place to which they proposed to go, no questions were asked and no objections offered.

They were expected to return to the college not later than eleven at night, and one invitation to go out in the week was, as a rule, the most they ever accepted.

Into this life Priscilla came, fresh from the Devonshire farm and from all the pursuits and interests which had hitherto formed her world.  She had made a very firm niche for herself in Aunt Raby’s old cottage, and the dislodgment therefrom caused her for the time such mental disquiet and so many nervous and queer sensations that her pain was often acute and her sense of awkwardness considerable.

Priscilla’s best in her early life always seemed but a poor affair, and she certainly neither looked nor was at her best at first here.  After a few days, however, she fitted into her new grooves, took up the line of study which she intended to pursue and was quickly absorbed in all the fascinations which it offered to a nature like hers.

Her purse was restored to her on the morning after her arrival, and neither Maggie Oliphant nor Nancy Banister ever guessed that she had overheard some words of theirs on the night of her arrival, and that these had put bitterness into her heart and nearly destroyed her faith in her fellow-students.  Both Maggie and Nance made several overtures of kindness to Prissie, but the cold manner which was more or less habitual to her never thawed, and, after a time, they left her alone.  There is no saying what might have happened to Prissie had she never overheard this conversation.  As it was, however, after the first shock it gave her courage.

She said to herself: 

“I should think very little of myself if I did not despise a girl like Miss Oliphant.  Is it likely I should care to imitate one whom I despise?  There was a brief, dreadful hour when I absolutely pined to have pretty things in my room as she has in hers; now I can do without them.  My room shall remain bare and unadorned.  In this state it will at least look unique.”