what the girls had
done; who had been campused, and who had been called into the office.

Debby Alden listened to the chatter as though it were the profoundest
wisdom.

"And, Aunt Debby, what do you think? I missed Mrs. Vail again last week.
She came to take Helen for a ride and intended asking me to go with
them, but Sara and I had gone around the campus and so I missed my ride
and did not meet Mrs. Vail. Does it not seem strange, Aunt Debby, that I
should always miss her? I fell in love with her picture, you know, and I
was very anxious to know her. Don't you think it's very funny?"

"I do not know that it is funny," replied Debby. "It has just happened
so. Does the young man come with his mother?"

"Rob? Sometimes he does. He comes very often alone. Several times, Miss
Burkham permitted me to go down to the reception hall with Helen and
talk with him. Last week, when we had a reception, he was there, and he
talked to me a long, long time. I think he is the nicest boy I ever
knew. I think he is nicer than Ralph Orr. Don't you think so, Aunt
Debby?"

"You must remember that I met him but once, Hester. I liked him very
much. He had such a nice boyish manner."

"Boyish. Do you know how old he is?"

"I am sure he is under seventy," said Debby with a smile.

"Surely," said Miss Richards in her droll, quiet way, "he must be
younger than I am. I am only sixty-three."

Hester laughed. "You are making fun of me. He really isn't a boy. He is
twenty-one and a senior in a Medical School. My, but he has strong
nerves! I asked him if it didn't make him tremble to see the surgeons
cut the flesh from one. He said it never phased him. That was his
expression--never 'phased' him. I rather like the expression. It sounds
just like what you might expect from a college boy. Don't you think so?"

"I never knew college boys," began Debby Alden, but stopped suddenly.
She remembered in time that James Baker had been a college boy. "--I
never knew many, not enough to know what language to expect of them."

Hester had not caught the hesitancy in Miss Alden's speech. Miss
Richards had and looked up in time to see another Debby Alden than the
Debby she had always known. This Debby had the flush of sixteen years in
her cheeks and the tender light of day-dreams in her eyes.

Just a moment, Debby Alden sat thus. Then the woman came back where the
girl had been. "What more?" she asked Hester. "Of what else does this
wonderful lad talk?"