juggle with her intellect, as Prexie calls it.

Well, Lila and I marched down the long dining-room, past the seniors and
the faculty table, with our glasses held up in plain sight. As soon as we
reached the corridor in unmolested safety, Lila gave a skip so joyous
that some drops spattered on the floor.

She said, "Nobody caught us that time."

"Hush!" I jogged her elbow so that unluckily more milk splashed on the
rubber matting, "there's Martha."

Martha, you know--or probably you don't know until I tell you--was a
freshman who roomed with Lila and me that year. She was the dearest
little conscientious child with big eyes that were always staring at us
solemnly and giving me the shivers. She appeared to think so much more
than she spoke that we respected her a lot and tried to set her a good
example.

Martha was waiting for the elevator. She turned around and gazed at us
without saying a word. She is considerably like Robbie Belle in her
exasperating power of silence, but neither of them does it on purpose.

Unfortunately just then a senior behind her turned around too and said,
"Nobody catches anybody here. This is a college, not a boarding school."

Now such a remark as that was distinctly unkind, not so much because
either Lila or I had ever been to a boarding school, for we hadn't, as
because we wished we had. We had devoured all the stories about them and
envied the girls in them. We had hoped that we would find some of the
same kind of fun at college itself.

Lila blushed, and I could not think of any repartee that would be
appropriate, especially as Martha was staring so hard at the glass of
sugar. I had noticed all the fall that she was an odd child about candy.
She never would touch a mouthful of any that we made--and we made it
pretty often--maybe four times a week. She always just shook her head and
said she'd rather not.

It was a relief to hear the elevator come rattling up from the first
floor. The dining-room is on the second, you see, though I don't know
that this fact has any bearing on the story; still it may supply local
color or realism or something like that. Well, we entered the elevator,
and there stood a junior in the corner. This junior chanced to be an
editor of the college magazine which had offered a ten dollar prize for
the best short story handed in before October twentieth. She glanced at
us and then stared hard at Martha till we had passed the third floor, and
at the fourth she