LL TO NEWNHAM.

May week followed hard on the Tripos that year, but Darsie took no part
in the festivities. The remembrance of the tragic event of last summer
made her shrink from witnessing the same scenes, and in her physically
exhausted condition she was thankful to stay quietly in college.
Moreover, a sad task lay before her in the packing up her belongings,
preparatory to bidding adieu to the beloved little room which had been
the scene of so many joys and sorrows during the last three years.

Vie Vernon, as a publicly engaged young lady, was paying a round of
visits to her _fiance's_ relations, but Mr and Mrs Vernon had come up
as usual, arranging to keep on their rooms, so that they might have the
satisfaction of being in Cambridge when the Tripos List came out. With
a son like Dan and a daughter like Hannah, satisfaction was a foregone
conclusion; calm, level-headed creatures both of them, who were not to
be flurried or excited by the knowledge of a critical moment, but most
sanely and sensibly collected their full panoply of wits to turn them to
good account.

Hannah considered it in the last degree futile to dread an exam. "What
else," she would demand in forceful manner--"what else are you working
for? For what other reason are you here?" But her arguments, though
unanswerable, continued to be entirely unconvincing to Darsie and other
nervously constituted students.

The same difference of temperament showed itself in the manner of
waiting for results. Dan and Hannah, so to speak, wiped their pens
after the writing of the last word of the last paper, and there and then
resigned themselves to their fate. They had done their best; nothing
more was possible in the way of addition or alteration--for good or ill
the die was cast. Then why worry? Wait quietly, and take what came
along!

Blessed faculty of common sense! A man who is born with such a
temperament escapes half the strain of life, though it is to be doubted
whether he can rise to the same height of joy as his more imaginative
neighbour, who lies awake shivering at the thought of possible ills, and
can no more "wait quietly" for a momentous decision than he could
breathe with comfort in a burning house.

When the morning arrived on which the results of the Tripos were to be
posted on the door of the Senate House, Darsie and Hannah had taken a
last sad farewell of their beloved Newnham, and were ensconced with Mr
and Mrs Vernon in their c