men to mope round waiting for people, and I'm glad you had
the sense not to. Your trunk's come, but if you're not too tired let's
go up and see Ethel Hale before we unpack it."

Ethel Hale had spent a whole summer with Nan, and Betty beat her at
tennis and called her Ethel, and she called Betty little sister, just as
Nan did. But here she was a member of the faculty. "I shall never dare
come near her after you leave," said Betty. Just as she said it the door
of the room opened--Nan had explained that it was a freshman trick to
ring front door-bells--and Ethel rushed out and dragged them in.

"Miss Blaine and Miss Mills are here," she said.

Betty gathered from the subsequent conversation that Miss Blaine and
Miss Mills were also members of the faculty; and they were. But they had
just come in from a horseback ride, and they sat in rather disheveled
attitudes, eating taffy out of a paper bag, and their conversation was
very amusing and perfectly intelligible, even to a freshman who had
still an examination to pass.

"I didn't suppose the faculty ever acted like that. Why, they're just
like other people," declared Betty, as she tumbled into bed a little
later.

"They're exactly like other people," returned Nan sagely, from the
closet where she was hanging up skirts. "Just remember that and you'll
have a lot nicer time with them."

So ended Betty's first day at college. Nan finished unpacking, and then
sat for a long time by the window. Betty loved Nan, but Nan in return
worshiped Betty. They might call her the clever Miss Wales if they
liked; she would gladly have given all her vaunted brains for the
fascinating little ways that made Betty friends so quickly and for the
power to take life in Betty's free-and-easy fashion. "Oh, I hope she'll
like it!" she thought. "I hope she'll be popular with the girls. I don't
want her to have to work so hard for all she gets. I wouldn't exchange
my course for hers, but I want hers to be the other kind."

Betty was sound asleep.

CHAPTER II

BEGINNINGS

The next morning it poured.

"Of course," said Eleanor Watson impressively at breakfast. "It always
does the first day of college. They call it the freshman rain."

"Let's all go down to chapel together," suggested Rachel Morrison.

"You're going to order carriages, of course?" inquired Roberta Lewis
stiffly.

"Hurrah! Another joke for the grind-book," shrieked Mary Brooks. Then
she noticed Roberta's expression