ant
Newnham, and there could be no disappointment there! Peered at through
the cab window, the building appeared unexpectedly large and imposing.
It gave one a thrill of importance to realise that for the next three
years one would be part and parcel of its life, an inhabitant of its
great halls.

The cabman descended from the box and rang a peal at the bell, and it
came as something as a shock to see an ordinary-looking maid throw open
the door, though what exactly they had imagined the girls would have
found it difficult to say. The maid inquired their names, led them
forward through a long corridor, and flung open the door of a sitting-
room where a lady sat before a desk. It was a pretty, cheerful-looking
apartment, full of flowers, books, pictures, and quaint old-world
furniture, and the lady herself looked so much like other middle-aged
ladies, that if you had not known it you would never have suspected her
of being the Vice-President of a Women's College.

She was kind and agreeable. She shook hands, and hoped you were well;
hoped you had had a pleasant journey, hoped you would be happy in
College, hoped you would like your rooms; but there was a certain
mechanical quality in her voice which betrayed the fact that she had
said the same thing over and over again on innumerable occasions, would
say it twenty times or more this very afternoon, and that your own
personal arrival left her perfectly calm and cool.

The girls stuttered and stammered in response, felt vaguely crestfallen,
and worried as to what they should do next, but the Vice herself was in
no doubt. "She hoped they were ready for tea," and with a wave of the
hand summoned the maid to lead them a stage forward on their journey.

The second stage deposited the new-comers in the dining-hall, where tea
was already in progress, and about a dozen disconsolate-looking Freshers
were munching at bread-and-butter and cake in a silence which could be
felt. Apparently Darsie and Hannah were the only ones of the number
lucky enough to have come up in pairs, but even their tried powers of
speech were paralysed beneath the spell of that terrible silence, and
still more so by the relentless scrutiny of those twelve pairs of eyes.
And how those Freshers _did_ stare! The whites of their eyes positively
shone, as with one accord the pupils turned towards the opening door.
They had been stared at themselves, had come through the ordeal of being
the last arriva