forty girls as
they were ushered into reserved seats near the front of Convocation
Hall. They might some of them look like young hoydens in middy blouses
and gymnasium bloomers--which costume most of them affected during
school hours--but now, in their trim serge suits and _chic_ little hats,
they were a credit to their chaperon, and as it was considered bad form
to misbehave "in line" at church or concert or lecture, Miss Ashwell
settled down and gave herself up to the luxury of her own thoughts.

Judith, sitting beside her and looking eagerly at the portraits of
founders and benefactors, decided that they could not be very happy
thoughts, for she heard one soft little sigh and then another. Miss
Ashwell was unhappy again! Something pathetic about the droop of her
lips made Judith feel sudden anger against the unknown cause of Miss
Ashwell's melancholy. It might, of course, have been a large millinery
bill, or indigestion, or a blouse that wouldn't fit, but Judith's
romantic soul would have none of these. It must be that man in the
Italian snapshots. How pretty Miss Ashwell had looked that day when she
had showed Judith the Italian pictures! How her eyes had deepened until
they were almost violet, and how her cheeks had glowed! Perhaps he was
an unfaithful lover, perhaps he had married an Italian girl, or even a
German in a sudden impulse of pity, and now could not come home to
Canada to face his old love. No, not married, just betrothed, because of
course he must come home, and Judith was already staging Miss Ashwell's
wedding when the President and faculty members, together with
distinguished guests and officials of the Red Cross Society, took their
places on the dais.

Judith leaned forward eagerly. How delightfully the red and blue
splashes of colour of the professors' academic hoods showed up against
the old-oak panelling. That must be an Oxford hood, and there was an
Edinburgh one. Daddy had showed her one like that--but the President was
speaking. He regretted that Dr. Johnson, who was to have lectured this
afternoon, was unavoidably absent through illness, but a distinguished
graduate of their own, who had been with the Intelligence Staff in Italy
and had won the Military Cross because of a particularly brilliant piece
of work there, who had been a prisoner in Russia for nearly a year, and
who had recently been engaged in relief work in Serbia, had been
prevailed upon to take Dr. Johnson's place. He had much p