stones.

"Isn't this seat for freshmen either?" she broke in, trying not to let
her lips quiver and determined to show them all that she was, at any
rate, no coward.

The student, still holding his hat, smiled languidly as he shook his
head.

"I'm new, you see," she urged, begging him with her smile to be on her
side,--"dreadfully new! Must I wait three years before I sit here?"

"I'm afraid you'll not want to do it even then," he said pleasantly.
"You understand this bench--the C bench we call it--is for men; any man
above a freshman."

Kate gathered the hardihood to ask:--

"But why is it for men, please?"

"I don't know why. We men took it, I suppose." He wasn't inclined to
apologize apparently; he seemed to think that if the men wanted it they
had a right to it.

"This bench was given to the men, perhaps?" she persisted, not knowing
how to move away.

"No," admitted the young man; "I don't believe it was. It was presented
to the University by a senior class."

"A class of men?"

"Naturally not. A graduating class is composed of men and women. C
bench," he explained, "is the center of activities. It's where the drum
is beaten to call a mass meeting, and the boys gather here when they've
anything to talk over. There's no law against women sitting here, you
know. Only they never do. It isn't--oh, I hardly know how to put it--it
isn't just the thing--"

"Can't you break away, McCrea?" some one called.

The youth threw a withering glance in the direction of the speaker.

"I can conduct my own affairs," he said coldly.

But Kate had at last found a way to bring the interview to an end.

"I said I was new," she concluded, flinging a barbed shaft. "I thought
it was share and share alike here--that no difference was made between
men and women. You see--I didn't understand."

The C bench came to be a sort of symbol to her from then on. It was the
seat of privilege if not of honor, and the women were not to sit on it.

Not that she fretted about it. There was no time for that. She settled
in Foster Hall, which was devoted to the women, and where she expected
to make many friends. But she had been rather unfortunate in that. The
women were not as cooeperative as she had expected them to be. At table,
for example, the conversation dragged heavily. She had expected to find
it liberal, spirited, even gay, but the girls had a way of holding back.
Kate had to confess that she didn't think men would be like th