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“Oh, it just blew in,” said Madeline lazily. “Then it sprouted, and now I’m very curious to see how tall it will grow.” With which lucid explanation she sauntered off to the library.

She was really getting very much interested in Georgia Ames, but, as she was also very much interested in a number of other things, and as Georgia obviously would keep until she was wanted, Madeline was in no haste to push her forward.

That day’s recitation in English Essayists had been the last of the week, and it was the third recitation of the following week before the class had any more written work. Madeline finished hers with her usual promptness, and then, having nothing else to do, wrote a paper for Georgia Ames, not because she had anything particular to say, but on the principle that Georgia, being on the professor’s roll, would better be doing her work.

That night the Belden House gave its annual dance in the gym. It was still Indian summer weather and the moon was full. Madeline, who did not share the enthusiasm of most Harding girls for man-less dances, arranged her program with a view to frequent intervals of moonlight and solitude on the back campus. She danced the first number with one of her guests, and then strolled out to enjoy numbers two, three and four, which were blanks. She found a belated hammock, sole relic of the joys of springtime, swinging under the yellowing apple-trees, and lay back in it, listening to the music that floated out, soft and sweet, from the gaily lighted gym., and enjoying that delicious sense of evaded responsibility which only the true Bohemian, without even the vestige of a New England conscience, can experience.