-if YOU don't change."

"But he's so bitter against Jack," replied Pauline. "He won't listen
to his side--to our side--of it."

"Anyhow, what's the use of anticipating trouble? You wouldn't get
married yet. And if he's worthwhile he'll wait."

Pauline had been even gentler than her own judgment in painting her
lover for her cousin's inspection. So, she could not explain to her
why there was necessity for haste, could not confess her conviction
that every month he lived away from her was a month of peril to him.

"We want it settled," she said evasively.

"I haven't seen him around anywhere," went on Olivia. "Is he here now?"

"He's in Chicago--in charge of his father's office there. He may stay
all winter."

"No, there's no hurry," went on Olivia. "Besides, you ought to meet
other men. It isn't a good idea for a girl to marry the man she's been
brought up with before she's had a chance to get acquainted with other
men." Olivia drew this maxim from experience--she had been engaged to
a school-days lover when she went away to Battle Field to college; she
broke it off when, going home on vacation, she saw him again from the
point of wider view.

But Pauline scorned this theory; if Olivia had confessed the broken
engagement she would have thought her shallow and untrustworthy. She
was confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity for self-doubt,
that in all the wide world there was only one man whom she could have
loved or could love.

"Oh, I shan't change," she said in a tone that warned her cousin
against discussion.

"At any rate," replied Olivia, "a little experience would do you no
harm." She suddenly sat up in bed. "A splendid idea!" she exclaimed.
"Why not come to Battle Field with me?"

"I'd like it," said Pauline, always eager for self-improvement and
roused by Olivia's stories of her college experiences. "But father'd
never let me go to Battle Field College."

"Battle Field UNIVERSITY," corrected Olivia. "It has classical courses
and scientific courses and a preparatory school--and a military
department for men and a music department for women. And it's going to
have lots and lots of real university schools--when it gets the money.
And there's a healthy, middle-aged wagon-maker who's said to be
thinking of leaving it a million or so--if he should ever die and if
they should change its name to his."

"But it's coeducation, isn't it? Father would never consent. It was
all mother