"Oh, ah, yes! Helen Ross dotes on me. Disinterested, of course. No connection with the brother over the way!" commented Hannah with a grin.

"By the way, I hear from Dan that your friend Ralph Percival is in trouble already, playing cards, getting into debt, and staying out after hours. Seems to be a poor-spirited sort of fellow from all accounts!"

"He saved my life, anyway, when I was a youngster, and very nearly drowned myself, paddling up a mill-stream. There's no want of spirit about Ralph. Life has been made too easy for him, that's the mischief!"

said Darsie in her most elderly and judicial manner. "It's difficult to keep to the grind when you know that you will never need to work. He needs an object in life. Until he finds that, he will be content to drift."

"He'll drift into being sent down at this rate. That will be the end of him!" croaked Hannah gloomily; whereupon Darsie knitted her brows and collapsed into silence for the rest of the meal.

Poor, dear, handsome Ralph! At the bottom of her heart Darsie was hardly surprised to hear Hannah's report. The indifference with which he had entered upon his college life had not developed into any more earnest spirit, as had been abundantly proved by his conversation when the two had last met, during the long vacation, while the hesitating manner of his mother and sisters seemed to hint at a hidden anxiety. In the depths of her heart Darsie was feeling considerably piqued by the fact that though she had now been over a month in Cambridge Ralph had shown no anxiety to meet her, or to fulfil his promise of "showing the ropes." Other girls had been invited to merry tea-parties in the different colleges, and almost daily she had expected such an invitation for herself, but neither of her two men friends had paid her this mark of attention; but for the fact of an occasional meeting in the streets they might as well have been at the other end of the land. Pride forbade her commenting on the fact even to Hannah; but inwardly she had determined to be very proud and haughty when the deferred meeting came about. Dan was too wrapped up in himself to care for outsiders; Ralph was a slacker--not worth a thought. Darsie dismissed them both with a shrug. Margaret France was worth a dozen men put together!

Ten o'clock on Tuesday evening seemed long in coming, but the moment that the clock pointed to the hour Darsie hastened to her new friend's study, and to her satisfaction found her still alone. The room looked delightfully cosy with pink shades over the lights, a clear blaze upon the grate, and Margaret herself, in a pink rest-gown curled up in a wicker-chair, was the very embodiment of ease. She did not rise as Darsie entered, but pointed to a chair close at hand, with an eagerness which was in itself the best welcome.

"That's right. Come along! I'm glad you're the first. Sit down and look around. How do you like my den?"

Darsie stared to right and left with curious eyes, and came to the instant conclusion that Margaret's room was like herself. From floor to ceiling, from window to door, there was not one single article which did not give back a cheering impression. If the article were composed of metal, it shone and glittered until it could shine no farther; if of oak, every leaf and moulding spoke of elbow-grease, and clean, fresh- smelling polish; if it were a fabric of wool or cotton, it was invariably of some shade of rose, shedding, as it were, an aspect of summer in the midst of November gloom.

Over the fireplace was fastened a long brown-paper scroll, on which some words were painted in big ornamental letters. Darsie read them with a thrill of appreciation--

"Two men looked out through prison bars, One saw mud, the other stars!"

The eyes of the two girls met, and lingered. Then Darsie spoke--

"That's your motto in life! You look out for stars--"

"Yes! So do you. That's why I wanted to be friends."

"I wonder!" mused Darsie, and sat silent, gazing into the fire. "It is beautiful, and I understand the drift, but--would you mind paraphrasing it for my benefit?"

"It's so simple. There _is_ mud, and there _are_ stars. It's just a choice of where we choose to look."

"Yes--I see. But don't you think there are times--when one is awfully down on one's luck, for instance--when there's no one on earth so trying as the persistent optimist who _will_ make the best of everything, and take a cheerful view! You want to murder him in cold blood. I do, at least. You feel ever so much more cheered by some one who acknowledges the mud, and says how horrid it is, and pities you for sticking so fast!"

Margaret's ringing laugh showed all her pretty white teeth. She rubbed her hands together in delighted appreciation.

"Oh, I know, I know! I want to kill them, too. Vision's not a mite of use without tact. But no bars can shut out the stars if we choose to let them shine."

Her own face was ashine as she spoke, but anything more unlike "goodiness," abhorred by every normal girl, it would be impossible to imagine.

"Tell me about your work--how do you get on with your coach?" she asked the next moment, switching off to ordinary subjects in the most easy and natural of manners, and Darsie found herself laying bare all the little hitches and difficulties which must needs enter into even the most congenial course of study, and being alternately laughed at and consoled, and directed towards a solution by brisk, apt words.

"You're all right--you've got a head. You'll come through on top, if you'll be content to go slow. Want to take the Tripos first year, and honours at that--that's your style! Calm down, my dear, and be content to jog. It pays better in the end." She flashed a radiant smile at Darsie's reddening face, then jumped up to greet her other guests of the evening, three in number, who appeared at that moment, each carrying her own precious portion of milk.

One was "Economics" and owned so square a jaw that the line of it (there was no curve) seemed to run down straight with the ear; another was "Science" and wore spectacles; a third was "Modern Languages," like the host, but one and all shared an apparently unlimited appet.i.te for Cocoa, Conversation, and Chelsea buns, the which they proceeded to enjoy to the full. "Modern Languages" being in the ascendant, indulged in a little "shop" as a preliminary, accompanied by the sighs, groans, and complaints incidental to the subject.

"How's your drama getting on? Is it developing satisfactorily?"

Student Number Two inquired of Darsie, in reference to the paper given out at the last lecture in Divinity Hall, and Darsie shrugged with a plaintive air.

"I've been struggling to develop it, to _trace_ its development, as he said; but the tracings are decidedly dim! I get on much better with a subject on which I can throw a little imagination. 'The growth of the novel,' for instance--I wove quite a fairy-tale out of that."

The girls smiled, but with a dubious air.

"Better be careful! That's a ruse which most of us have tried in our day, and come wearily back to sober fact... How do you like the Historical French Grammar?"

The Fresher made a gesture as if to tear her hair, whereupon the second- year girls groaned in chorus.

"Hopeless! Piteous! In last year's Tripos the paper was positively inhuman. The girls said it was impossible even to understand the questions, much less to answer them."

"Wicked! Waste of time, I call it. Most of us are training to teach, but it's not one in a hundred who will be called upon to teach _that_ erudite horror."

Darsie looked at Margaret France as she spoke, and saw at once by the expression of her companions that she had touched on a delicate subject.

There was a moment's silence, then--

"I am not going to teach," said Margaret, smiling.

"Really! Then-- What are you going to do?"

"Live at home."

A future profession seemed so universal a prospect with the Newnham students that Margaret's reply amazed Darsie as much as it appeared to annoy her other hearers.

Economics sniffed, and muttered beneath her breath; Science stared fixedly at the ceiling through her glittering spectacles; Modern Languages groaned aloud.

"With your brain! With your spirit! After this training! Such wicked waste..."

Margaret laughed lightly.

"Oh, Darsie Garnett, how mean of you, when I feed you with my best Chelsea buns, to land me in this time-honoured discussion! I'm an only child, and my parents have been perfect bricks in giving me my wish and sparing me for three whole years! The least I can do is to go home and do a turn for them. I fail to see where the waste comes in!"

"All you have learned--all you have studied--all you have read--"

"Just so! I hope it will make me a more interesting companion for them.

And for myself! I've got to live with myself all the days of my life, remember, and I do _not_ wish to be bored!"

"You have such power, such capacity! You might do some work for the world!"

"I intend to. What's the world made up of, after all, but a number of separate homes? As a matter of ordinary common sense isn't it best to work in one's _own_ home, rather than in a strange one?"

Margaret threw out her hands with a pretty appealing gesture, and her companions stared at her in silence, apparently too nonplussed to reply.

Before they had time to rally to the attack, however, a startling interruption had occurred.

With a suddenness and violence which made the cocoa-drinkers jump in their seats the door burst open, and the figure of a girl in evening dress precipitated herself into their midst. Her light skirt was thrown over her shoulders, revealing an abbreviated white petticoat; her eyes were fixed with a deadly determination; regardless of the occupants of the room or of the articles of furniture scattered here and there, she flew at lightning speed to the window, closed it with a resounding bang, leaped like a cat at the ventilator overhead, banged that also, and with one bound was out of the room, the door making a third bang in her wake.

Darsie gasped in dismay. She herself had been transfixed with astonishment, but her companions had displayed a marvellous self- possession. Margaret had wrapped her arms round the cocoa-table to protect it from upset, another girl had steadied the screen, a third had obligingly lifted her chair out of the way; but no sign of alarm or curiosity showed upon their faces, which fact did but heighten the mystery of the situation.

"Is she--is she _mad_?"

The second-year girls laughed in chorus. From afar could be heard a succession of bang, bang, bangs, as if in every study in the house the same performance was being enacted. Margaret nodded at the Fresher with kindly rea.s.surance.

"Only the fire drill! They've had an alarm, and she's told to shut off draughts. Very good going! Not more than five or six seconds all told!"