could do to persuade him to let me go to public school."

"But maybe he'd let you go with me, where he wouldn't let you go all
alone."

And so it turned out. Colonel Gardiner, anxious to get his daughter
away from Saint X and into new scenes where Dumont might grow dim,
consented as soon as Olivia explained her plan.

Instead of entering "senior prep", Pauline was able to make freshman
with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into
Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literary
and debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding new
events, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself her
old-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herself
humming--and checked herself reproachfully. She caught herself
singing--and lowered it to humming. She caught herself whistling--and
decided that she might as well be cheerful while she waited for fate to
befriend her and Jack. And she found that she thought about him none
the less steadfastly for thinking hopefully.

Battle Field put no more restraint upon its young women than it put
upon its young men--and it put no restraint upon the young men. In
theory and practice it was democratic, American, western--an outgrowth
of that pioneer life in which the men and the women had fought and
toiled and enjoyed, side by side, in absolute equality, with absolute
freedom of association. It recognized that its students had been
brought up in the free, simple, frank way, that all came from a region
where individualism was a religion, with self-reliance as the cardinal
principle of faith and self-development as the goal.

There were no dormitories at Battle Field then. Olivia and Pauline
lived in one of the hundred or more boarding-houses--a big, square,
white "frame," kept by a Mrs. Trent, the widow of a "hero of two wars."

Her hero had won her with his uniform when he returned from the Mexican
War. His conduct was so irregular and his income so uncertain that it
had been a relief to her when he departed for his second war. From it
he had brought home a broken constitution, a maimed body and confirmed
habits of shiftlessness and drunkenness. His country took his
character and his health and paid him in exchange a pension which just
about kept him in whisky and tobacco. So long as he was alive Mrs.
Trent hated him as vigorously as her Christianity permitted. When he
was safely in his grave sh