tonished the other freshmen by their
depth and originality, but when any one exclaimed, Eleanor would say,
sharply, "Why, it's all in the text-book!" and then relapse into gloomy
silence.

"I suppose she talks more to her friends outside," suggested Rachel,
after an encounter of this sort.

"Not on your life," retorted Katherine. "She's one of the kind that
keeps herself to herself. She hates us because we have to know as much
about her as we do, living here in the house with her. I hope she gets
through all right."

"She's awfully clever," said Mary Rich admiringly. "She'd never have
said that a leviathan was some kind of a church creed, as I did in
English."

"Yes, she's a clever--blunderer, but she's also a sadly mistaken young
person," amended Katherine.

It was convenient to have one's examinations scattered evenly through
the week with time for study between them, but pleasanter on the whole
to be through by Thursday or Friday, with several days of delicious
idleness before the new semester began. And as a certain faction of the
college always manages to suit its own convenience in such matters, the
campus, which is the unfailing index of college sentiment, began to wear
a leisurely, holiday air some time before the dreaded week was over.

The ground was covered deeply with snow which a sudden thaw and as
sudden a freeze had coated with a thick, hard crust. This put a stop to
snow-shoeing and delayed the work of clearing the ice off Paradise pond,
where there was to be a moonlight carnival on the evening of the holiday
that follows mid-year week. But it made splendid coasting. Toboggans,
"bobs" and hand sleds appeared mysteriously in various quarters, and the
pasture hills north of the town swarmed with Harding girls out for fresh
air, exercise and fun.

On Friday afternoon an ingenious damsel who had no sled conceived the
idea of substituting a dust-pan. So she borrowed one of an obliging
chambermaid and went out to the little slope which divides the front
from the back campus to try her experiment. In twenty minutes the hill
was alive with girls, all the available dust-pans had been pressed into
service, and large tin pans were found to do nearly as well. Envious
groups of girls who could get neither the one nor the other watched the
absurd spectacle from the windows of the nearest campus houses or
hurried down-town to buy tinware. Sleds were neglected, toboggans
despised; the dust-pan fad had taken pos