the gymnasium. At five I went to a tea which one of the girls was giving
for her mother, so I felt obliged to go. I stayed only half an hour and
cannot remember how I spent the half hour till dinner, so I presume it
was wasted. I am afraid I am too much given to describing such
unimportant pauses in the day's occupation and magnifying their length
and the frivolous pleasure which we thoughtlessly derive from them.

"In the evening---- Oh it all goes on like that," cried Roberta. "Just
dull and stuffy and true to the facts. Some one else read."

"It's convincing," chuckled Mary. "Now Katherine."

Katherine's letter was an absurd mixture of sense and nonsense, in which
she proved that she studied at least twelve hours out of the
twenty-four. Rachel's was a sensible explanation of just how much time,
or rather how little, a spread, a dance or a basket-ball game takes.

"That's what they don't understand," she said, "and they don't know
either how fast we can go from one thing to another up here. Why, energy
is in the air!"

Betty's letter, like her literature paper, was extremely short. "I
couldn't think of much to say, if I told the truth," she explained,
blushing. "I don't suppose I do study as much as I ought."

Mary had listened with an air of respectful attention to all the
letters. When the last one was finished she rose hastily. "I must go
back," she said. "I have a theme to write. I only dropped in to ask if
that famous spread wasn't coming off soon."

"Oh, yes," said Betty. "Let's have it next week Wednesday. Is anything
else going on then? I'll ask Eleanor and you see the Riches and Helen."

A few days later Mary appeared at the lunch table fairly bursting with
importance. "Well," she said, beaming around the table. "What do you
suppose has happened now? Really, Mrs. Chapin, you ought to be proud of
us. We began to be famous before college opened----"

"What?" interrupted Eleanor.

"Is it possible you didn't know that?" inquired Mary. "Well, it's true
nevertheless. And we were the heroines of Mountain Day, and now we're
famous again."

"How?" demanded the table in a chorus.

Mary smiled enigmatically. "This time it is a literary sensation," she
said.

"Is it Helen's paper?" hazarded Betty.

"Mine, of course," said Katherine. "Strange Miss Mills didn't mention it
this morning when I met her at Cuyler's."

Mary waited until it was quiet again. "If you've quite finished
guessing," she said, "I'll