hing. I didn't mean to. By the way, how do you like college,
Miss Sanders?"

"It isn't so much fun as I had expected," said she. Bea's head popped
around the door again. The junior was smiling with an air of amused
superiority.

"Ah, yes, I understand. Probably you used to have a sister or cousin at
college, and from her letters you supposed that the life was composed
chiefly of dancing, fudges and basket-ball with a little work sandwiched
in between. Is it not so? And now----"

"I don't mind the work," here Bea's head popped out a third time to
contemplate this interesting classmate, "but----"

"Beatrice," called Lila at her other ear, "Berta says to hurry or we'll
miss the best of the fun. It's to be a sheet-and-pillow-case party
to-morrow, and a lot of the girls are coming in to learn how to do the
draping. Berta has an idea. Come along quick!"

Robbie Belle Sanders stared after them wistfully. "Those girls live near
me," she said, "they have fun all the time."

The junior's keen glance spied in the open countenance something that
kept her lingering a moment longer. "This is a democratic place," she
said in a more sympathetic tone, "every girl finds her own level sooner
or later. The basis is not money or social rank of the families at home.
It is not brains or clothes or stuff like that. It is simply that the
same kind of girls drift together. They're congenial. It seems to be a
law. A general law, you understand. Of course," she hesitated for an
instant before being spurred on by her sense of scrupulous honesty,
"there are exceptions. Once in a while a girl fails to find her special
niche. Maybe she rooms off the campus and is not thrown in contact with
her own kind. She may be abnormally shy--that hinders her from making
friends. Or perhaps she does something that queers herself first thing."

"Queers herself?" echoed Robbie Belle, "how does a person queer herself?"

"Oh, I don't know." She paused to reflect. "She does outlandish things.
And still it isn't what she does so much as what she is. Her acts express
her character. If her character is queer, she behaves queerly, and the
others fight shy of her. After all, I dare say she does find her own
level, and there is nobody else there. So she goes along solitary through
the four years."

Robbie Belle looked frightened. "I wish I knew what things are queer,"
she said.

"Oh, being different from the other girls, for instance, awfully
different, so differ