t be alarmed. I assure you there is no cause. You
will have letters to-morrow."

Ethel would fain have thrown off her finery and hurried home at once,
but no one regarded the matter as she did. Dr. May agreed with Flora
that it was no worse than before, and though they now thought Ethel's
return desirable, on Margaret's account, it would be better not to add
to the shock by a sudden arrival, especially as they took in no daily
paper at home. So the theatre was not to be given up, nor any of the
subsequent plans, except so far as regarded Ethel; and, this agreed,
they started for the scene of action.

They were hardly in the street before they met the ubiquitous Mr.
Ogilvie, saying that Cheviot, Norman's prompter, was aware of the
report, and was guarding him, while he came to escort the ladies,
through what he expressively called "the bear fight." Ethel resolutely
adhered to her father, and her cousin took care of Meta, who had been
clinging in a tiptoe manner to the point of her brother's high elbow,
looking as if the crowd might easily brush off such a little fly,
without his missing her.

Inch by inch, a step at a time, the ladies were landed in a crowd of
their own sex, where Flora bravely pioneered; they emerged on their
benches, shook themselves out, and seated themselves. There was the
swarm of gay ladies around them, and beneath the area, fast being paved
with heads, black, brown, gray, and bald, a surging living sea, where
Meta soon pointed out Dr. May and George; the mere sight of such masses
of people was curious and interesting, reminding Ethel of Cherry Elwood
having once shocked her by saying the Whit-Monday club was the most
beautiful sight in the whole year. And above! that gallery of trampling
undergraduates, and more than trampling! Ethel and Meta could, at first,
have found it in their hearts to be frightened at those thundering
shouts, but the young ladies were usually of opinions so similar,
that the louder grew the cheers, the more they laughed and exulted, so
carried along that no cares could be remembered.

Making a way through the thronged area, behold the procession of
scarlet doctors, advancing through the midst, till the red and black
vice-chancellor sat enthroned in the centre, and the scarlet line became
a semicircle, dividing the flower-garden of ladies from the black mass
below.

Then came the introduction of the honorary doctors, one by one, with
the Latin speech, which Ethel's com