mpanied her that morning, and introduced her
to four or five girls in the sophomore "prep" class, who came from the
representative best families of the town. Also, as a matter of course, she
had been welcomed as one of them, but Kit, with her democratic notions,
never even realized that she occupied one of the seats of the mighty, in a
circle of the favored few, and that she had smashed all tradition by
introducing into that circle a Beaubien. In fact, even if she had known,
she would probably have been thoroughly indignant at any such spirit among
the girls themselves.

Jean and Helen were the natural-born aristocrats in the family, Kit always
said. They loved to feel themselves aloof and not part of the populace.

"The sedan chair and palanquin for both of you," Kit had been wont to say,
scornfully, "but give me a good horse and a wide trail, or if I can't
have the horse, I'll hike."

And here she loved to quote Stevenson's "Vagabond" to them.

"Give to me the life I love,
Let the lave go by me,
Give the jolly heaven above
And the byway nigh me.

"Wealth I ask not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I ask, the heaven above,
And the road below me."

The whole morning was taken up with the assigning of students to classes.
Kit loved the curious bustle and excitement of it all. It was so different
from the small high school back home, and there were many more boys and
girls than she had expected to see. Almost, as she passed from room to
room, through the different buildings, she wished she were staying right
there as a year pupil. Amy introduced her to her closest friend, Peggy
Barrows, a girl from South Dakota, who took them up to her quarters in
one of the dormitories.

"Dear me," Kit said, looking around her speculatively. "I wish I were
going to live here. Peggy, you'll have to entertain us often. It's so kind
of solitary and restful, isn't it, up here?"

"Solitary," scoffed Peggy. "I've been here four days getting settled, and
you might just as well call the side show of a circus solitary. There
isn't even the ghost of privacy. I'm mobbed every time I try to sit and
meditate."

"Who wants to meditate, anyway?" asked Amy. "Don't you feel 'the rushing
torrent of ambition's flood sweeping away the barriers' and--what else did
the Dean say?"

"Log jam," Kit put in. "That's what he meant, log jam of laziness. Have
you discovered all these shelves in your