m her grandfather. Her old friend Dr. Wandless sent
occasionally, in his kindly humorous fashion, the news of Buckeye Lane
and the college; and Mrs. Owen wrote a hurried line now and then,
usually to quote one of John Ware's sayings. The minister asked about
Sylvia, it seemed. These things helped, but they did not supply the
sympathy, of which she was conscious in countless ways, between her
fellow students and their near of kin. With the approach of holiday
times, the talk among her companions of the homes that awaited them, or,
in the case of many, of other homes where they were to visit, deepened
her newly awakened sense of isolation. Fathers and mothers appeared
constantly to visit their daughters, and questions that had never
troubled her heart before arose to vex her. Why was it, when these other
girls, flung together from all parts of the country, were so blest with
kindred, that she had literally but one kinsman, the grandfather on whom
all her love centred?

It should not be thought, however, that she yielded herself morbidly to
these reflections, but such little things as the receipt of gifts, the
daily references to home affairs, the photographs set out in the girls'
rooms, were not without their stab. She wrote to Professor Kelton:--

"I wish you would send me your picture of mother. I often wondered
why you didn't give it to me; won't you lend it to me now? I think
it is put away in your desk in the library. Almost all the girls
have pictures of their families--some of them of their houses and
even the horse and dog--in their rooms. And you must have a new
picture taken of yourself--I'd like it in your doctor's gown, that
they gave you at Williams. It's put away in the cedar chest in the
attic--Mary will know where. And if you have a picture of father
anywhere I should like to have that too."

She did not know that when this reached him--one of the series of
letters on which the old gentleman lived these days, with its Wellesley
postmark, and addressed in Sylvia's clear, running hand, he bowed his
white head and wept; for he knew what was in the girl's heart--knew and
dreaded this roused yearning, and suffered as he realized the arid
wastes of his own ignorance. But he sent her the picture of her mother
for which she asked, and had the cottage photographed with Mills Hall
showing faintly beyond the hedge; and he meekly smuggled his doctor's
gown to the city and