it to a Russian puppet-show and supper in a Chinese
restaurant. The pretty artist sold one of her pictures and invited them
to help her celebrate, just as if they were old friends, who knew how
hard she had struggled and how often she hadn't had money enough to buy
herself bread and butter, to say nothing of offering jam--in the shape
of oysters on the half-shell and lobster Newburg--to other people.

It was all so gay and light-hearted and unexpected--the way things
happened in Bohemia. Nobody hurried or worried, though everybody worked
hard. It was just as Madeline had told them, only more so. The girls
said a sorrowful good-bye to Mrs. Bob, Mrs. McLean and the little black
kitten and journeyed back to Harding sure that there never had been and
never would be another such vacation for them.

"How can there be?" said Bob dejectedly. "At Easter we shall all have to
get clothes, and after that we shan't know a vacation from mid-year
week."

"Which delightful function begins in exactly fourteen days," said
Katherine Kittredge. "Is there anybody here present whose notes on Hegel
have the appearance of making sense?"

19-- took its senior midyears gaily and quite as a matter of course,
lectured its underclass friends on the evils of cramming, and kept up
its spirits by going coasting with Billy Henderson, Professor
Henderson's ten-year-old son, who had admired college girls ever since
he found that Bob Parker could beat him at steering a double-runner.
Between times they bought up the town's supply of "The Merchant of
Venice,"--"not to learn any part, you know, but because we're
interested in our play," each purchaser explained to her friends.

For there is no use in proclaiming your aspirations to be a Portia or a
Shylock until you are sure that your dramatic talent is going to be
appreciated. Of course there were exceptions to this rule, but the girl
who said at a campus dinner-table, "If I am Portia, who is there tall
enough for Bassanio?" became a college proverb in favor of keeping your
hopes to yourself, and everybody was secretly delighted when she decided
that she "really didn't care" to be in the mob.

CHAPTER X

TRYING FOR PARTS

"Teddie Wilson has gone and got herself conditioned in psych.,"
announced Bob Parker, bouncing unceremoniously through Betty's half-open
door.

"Oh, Bob!" Betty's tone was fairly tragic. "Does that mean that she
can't try for a part in the play?"

Bob nodded. "Cast-ir