to win the prize away from all the upper
class girls. I didn't vote for her. By-bye."

"Oh!" exclaimed Adele, clasping her hands in that intense way of hers,
"won't she be happy when she hears! A little ignorant unknown freshman to
win the prize for the best short story among eight hundred students! Her
mother will be delighted. Her mother will be proud."

"Hist!" Jo's head reappeared. "She's coming down the corridor now. Red
cheeks, bright eyes, ordinary nose, round chin, long braid, white
shirtwaist, tan skirt--nothing but an average freshman. She doesn't look
like a mathematical prodigy, but she is one. And an author, too--dear,
dear! There must be some mistake. Authors never have curly hair."

Adele and I poked our faces through the crack. Jo wickedly flung the door
wide open. "Walk right out, ladies and gentlemen. See the conquering
heroine comes," she sang in a voice outrageously shrill. During the trill
on the hero, she bowed almost double right in the path of the approaching
freshman. Maria Mitchell Kiewit stopped short, her eyes as round as the
buttons on her waist.

Jo fell on her knees, lifting her outspread hands in ridiculous
admiration. "O Maria Mitchell Kiewit," she declaimed, "hearken! I have
the honor--me, myself--I snatch it, seize it--the honor to announce that
thou--thee--you--your own self hast won the ten dollar prize for the best
short story written for the Monthly by an undergraduate. Vale!" She
scrambled upright by means of clutching my skirt and put out a cordial
hand. "Nice girl! Shake!"

"Josephine!" gasped Adele in horrified rebuke. My breath was beginning to
come fast over this insult to our editorial dignity when I caught sight
of the freshman's face. Her cheeks were as red as ever, but she had
turned white about the lips, and her eyes were really terrified.

"Oh, I don't want it!" she cried involuntarily, shrinking away from us,
"I don't want it."

Jo's mouth fell open. "Then why in the world----"

The little freshman fairly ran to the alleyway leading to her room.

Jo turned blankly to us. "Then why in the world did she write the story
and send it in?"

Adele--I told you she was conscientious, didn't I? and inclined to be
mathematical herself--stared at the spot where Maria had disappeared.
"Such an attitude might be explained either by the supposition that she
is diffident--sort of stunned by the surprise, you understand--she never
expected to win. Or maybe she is shy and dre