On the hill under the pines Doris sat on a sofa pillow, reading aloud. Near by, Frances lay on a steamer rug, now watching the ceaseless motion of green branches against the sky, now turning to let her gaze wander out over the valley to the river that swept between sentinel mountains toward dimmer folds of blue. A delicate green mist clouded the world. It was April, and the earth was young.
"The woods decay, the woods decay and fall,
The vapors weep their burthen to the ground,
Man comes and tills the field and lies beneath,
And after many a summer dies the swan,"
read Doris, in her soft, clear voice.
Presently she shut the book and sat silent, looking from Frances' lovely face to the lovely world.
"Oh," said Frances, at last, "I never saw anything so beautiful as this place in spring!"
"It's so beautiful," said Doris, "that it makes you want to express it somehow."
"Did you ever try to write poetry, Doris?"
Doris blushed. "It isn't good."
"Neither is mine. But when I hear poetry, real poetry, in a place like this, I always feel - until I've tried it, you know - that I can do it myself."
Doris clasped her knees, and smiled dreamily. "And then I always vow that next time when I get home I will not look a pencil in the face."
"The words that went so beautifully in your mind limp so on paper!" sighed Frances. "And the rimes are such a bother."
"The rimes take your thoughts by the ear and lead them about like naughty children," mused Doris.
"They make you say things you never dreamed you were going to say," Frances remarked. "Sometimes they're good things, too. But I like best the time when it's all in your head, - the poem you never can write, - just dreamy, with maybe two or three lovely phrases sticking through the dreams, phrases that you can say over and over to yourself, and make the whole poem alive in your head."
"It will never be in anyone else's head," said Doris. "The catchwords wouldn't mean anything to anyone but you."
"'Here at the quiet limit of the world,'" murmured Frances. "That must have been one of the catch lines of Tithonus, don't you think so? Oh, I wish I were a poet, - a real one, - not a submerged poet."
Doris looked at Frances in thoughtful silence. "You are a poet," she said, at last.
"I? Didn't I tell you the rimes run me, not I them?"
"I didn't mean a writing poet. Perhaps you are that kind, too. I don't know. I meant - oh, it's hard to say. You - you look poetry!"
"Dorry! You barefaced little - sweetheart! Don't you know I was born the way I am?"
"So are writing poets. They can't help it, either. But it truly does make me think of poetry just to look at you."
Frances rolled across the steamer rug and hugged Doris. "If that isn't the prettiest thing to say! What a lovely inside your head has, Dorry."
Doris laughed. "It's a perfectly plain head. I wonder what your metre is."
"Not arma virumque cano."
"No, nor just a prettily tripping lyric. I think you're an ode, Frances, something swinging and stately, with lilting spots in it, you know. But it's a little soon to tell exactly."
"You mean you haven't read me from cover to cover yet."
"That's the idea."
"Don't you want to order the volume for use in your room next year?"
"Your picture? Of course I do."
"I meant the original manuscript."
Doris stared at her.
"Will you room with me?" Francis said. "That's plain English. I'm surprised that anyone who could rise to the heights of calling me poetry shouldn't be able to understand a simple figure of speech. Please, Dorry. I want it very much."
"O Frances - I'd love to. But I can't."
"I know I'm late in speaking about it. Somehow I never wake up to the necessity of doing a thing until it's too late."
"It's not that," said Doris. "Are people talking about next year already?"
"Already? Some girls made their plans last fall. A bunch came down to Rocky yesterday from Brigham to look at rooms. That's what got me started. You know we draw for numbers next month. Juniors choose first, then sophomores. Freshmen take what's left in the order of their lots."
"I've been dreadfully behind the times." Doris looked at Frances with troubled eyes. "I'd rather room with you than with anyother girl, except one, in college."
"I suppose I know her name," said Frances, gently. "That's all right, Dorry. Another year, perhaps."
"Perhaps you won't want me then."
"Perhaps I will, too."
Doris patted the hand beside her. "Frances," she said, "you are the most understanding person I know. Except Wally," she added, honestly. "You and Wally are the two most understanding people in college."
Frances plucked the book from Doris's lap. "Where is Wally this afternoon?"
She went to Walsted to get a hat. I offered to go along to help her. But she said that in this case misery didn't love company."
"What does Wally want of a hat?"
"She doesn't want anything of a hat. But her mother thinks that hats and girls and outdoors go naturally together. It was so cold that Wally didn't get one in vacation, and now she's afraid some member of her family may drop in on her suddenly and find her hat box empty."
Frances, who was slowly turning the leaves of the book, chuckled, "Poor Wally! She will wear it just once - on the train going home. Think of Wally's buying a hat when she might be up here reading about 'the ringing plains of windy Troy.'"
Doris's hand slipped over Frances' shoulder. "It was wonderful of you to want me," she whispered.
Frances reached up and clasped the little fingers. Then she read:
"My purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset and the baths
Of all the western stars until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles -"
"I like that 'it may be.' It may be some day I shall room with you."
The two girls did not stay much longer under the pines. Laden with pillows and steamer rug, they crossed the south campus.
Frances strolled past Rocky; on the path that ran from the street to the front door of Mead she met Wally. "How's the hat?"
"See for yourself," replied the fat girl. "It's a concession to civilization. That's all that can be said of it."
Frances inspected Wally's head carefully. "You're right," she agreed. "But I have seen worse."
"Plain," said Wally, "and serviceable; a neat bow is its only diversion. What more can mortal want? I'd cheerfully have done with less - with nothing, in fact. Now let's drop a painful subject. The society of a dentist is infinitely preferable to that of a milliner. Did anyone put pepper in your tea?"
"Not exactly. What a lightning calculator you are, Wally!" The fat girl wrenched the pins out of the despised hat and took it off. "Now I can breathe," she observed.
"People don't breathe with the tops of their heads," said Frances.
"I do."
"Whom is Bab rooming with next year?"
"Can't say. Dorry been refusing you?"
"Just that."
"Sorry," said the fat girl.
Meanwhile, Doris climbed the stairs to Number 64. She hoped to find Barbara there, but the room was empty. She pulled a Latin book from a shelf and tried to study. How much more pleasant it was to sit on pine needles and read poetry in your own tongue with Frances beside you than it was laboriously to translate poetry in the company of a dictionary! Certainly the spring weather got into your blood. Where was Barbara? But oh, how wonderful it was that Frances had wanted to room with her - Frances! It was odd what a sense of intimate security that knowledge gave their friendship. So Doris thought and studied, and waited for Barbara.
That young person was also feeling the spring. She was sitting under a clump of lilacs behind the house, holding Smoke, while Tiny-for-Short performed a delicate operation on Smoke's tail. Smoke was the cat that frequented Mead because the faculty gave it cream from their after-dinner coffee. Tiny was clipping the fur of Smoke's tail in neatly graduated rings.
"We do it to all our kittens at home," Tiny was saying, "so as to tell them from the neighbors' cats."
"Isn't he a sight!" chuckled Barbara. "Nice pusscat. Hold on there! You're almost done. Then you'll be the famous kitty."
Tiny-for-Short laid down her scissors, and squinted through half-shut eyes at the ridiculous tail. "That second ring is a sixteenth of an inch too long on this side," she remarked.
But Smoke considered himself finished. He gave a sudden spring, and escaped from Barbara's lap. Ruefully Tiny watched him go. "If I'd only fixed that second ring!" she said. "Well, now the fun will begin. Be sure to tell me everything you hear."
Barbara shook the cat hairs from her lap, and then the girls wandered down to the tennis courts, from which almost immediately they wandered back again. With rebellion tugging at her skirts Barbara went upstairs to study. Indoors was no place for a sane person on a day like this. Had she not worked hard enough to earn a holiday? Not that she meant to take one. But if she had meant to do so, how would she use it? Surely there was no harm in merely supposing the case.
"Did you know that people are beginning to talk about roommates for next year?" Doris asked.
"Oh yes," Barbara said, absently. "Tiny-for-Short asked me last fall. Didn't I tell you?" She pulled a trigonometry from the bookcase. "You don't mind, Dorry?"
The blue eyes met Barbara's steadily. "I? I think you and Tiny will have a splendid time rooming together."
"We'll have the best time girls ever had. Migs and Fuzz and Nina are going to try for the same house. And I want you. I've been intending to speak to you about it for a long time. Can't you bring Frances and Wally?"
"I don't know," said Doris.
"Tiny and I want to go to Pearson's. The others prefer Safford. We'll make it whichever you people say, if you come along."
"Don't you like Mead?"
"Oh, yes, but I like a change, too. Of course, we may have to go where we can. That depends on our lots. But if only one of us draws a good number, she's to exchange with somebody so as to give us all about the same luck. It's safer, if a bunch wants to keep together. And, anyway, it's the crowd that makes the house. Say you'll come along, Dorry. Please."
Doris smiled bravely into Barbara's eager face. "I'll think about it," she said.
When Barbara at last sat down at her desk, and bent her head over a table of logarithms, Doris was relieved. She did not wish to talk. Still less did she wish to be looked at. The pages of the lexicon turned slowly under her fingers. As soon as she shut the book, after looking up a word, she had to open it again at the same place. Nothing seemed to mean anything to her except that Barbara and Tiny-for-Short were going to room together next year. Barbara and Tiny-for-Short! Barbara and - Well, why not?
In her chair at the other desk, Barbara wriggled and twisted. Through the open windows the breeze blew happy sounds from the campus. She envied Doris her easy studiousness. How did she manage it? Barbara wondered where Smoke was holding court. Curiosity grew intolerable.
"I can't study this afternoon," she announced, abruptly, and went out.
Smoke was causing all the amusement that his artist patrons could have desired. Barbara found him contentedly lapping a saucer of milk in the midst of a hilarious group.
"What will those freshmen do next?" Gay Leavitt was asking, with traces of tears on her cheeks.
"How do you know it was a freshman who did it, Miss Sherlock Holmes?"
"Nobody else would have time enough, Migs, to turn out such an exhibit."
"What in the world have you got there, Gay?" asked Barbara. Her start of surprise was well simulated, but her amusement was genuine.
Upstairs Doris had dropped the appearance of studying. She still sat upright in front of the desk, but now her head dropped a little, and the pencil in her right hand traced aimless figures on the blotter. She felt like a person who is rudely shaken out of pleasant dreams. Her eyes stared unseeingly before her. What had she expected? What had she had a right to expect? Only an ache in her heart answered her. She had a feeling that if she could think it all out, the ache might go away. She must think it out.
There was a tap at the door, and Wally put her head into the room. "Come on out, D. D., where the sun is."
"I was up on the hill all the time you were in Halsted, Wally."
"So now you grind." Wally walked over to the window, and looked down on the fresh green of the young grass. "Spring has come," she announced, "before the seniors have jumped their ropes or the juniors spun their tops. And to-day three freshmen have within my hearing alluded to next year. Are you and Bab going to hit it off together again?"
Wally did not turn from the window.
"Oh, no," said Doris. "Bab's rooming with Tiny-for-Short. That was all settled last fall. Won't they make a fine team?"
"Barring accidents. They're a skittish pair."
Doris hesitated a moment. "Would you mind not staying just now, Wally? There's something I must do before dinner."
"Mind? Not a bit. Shall I hang out an engaged sign for you?"
"If you will, please."
Wally picked an engaged sign from the screen, patted Doris's small shoulder as she passed the desk, and went out.
"I'd like to pound some sense into that Leighton girl!" she muttered in the corridor. "Tiny-for-Short, indeed! Where are her eyes?"
Doris rested her head on her hands. What was the matter with her? Jealousy? Her spirit writhed. She searched the corners of her soul. No, it was not jealousy. It was only that she hated to give up Barbara. For it meant giving her up. Doris was clear-sighted. Not to room with Barbara meant in her case the casual intercourse of the campus, a half hour together now and then, a wave of the hand, a nod, the gradual drifting apart that comes to people who are not necessary to each other. Time was short, and girls were many, and the campus was wide.
The arrangement was the most natural in the world; she could not deny that. She ought to have foreseen it long ago. She had been stupid because she had been happy. And then, like a boomerang, the words that she had spoken to Wally recoiled on her. Tiny and Barbara would indeed make a "fine team." How well they would pull together! How happy they would be! Doris lifted her head with a startled motion. Did she not want Barbara to be happy? Of course she did. Then she was glad, was she not, that Tiny and Barbara should be rooming together? Glad! She drew a quivering breath. Not very glad, yet. But perhaps she would be. Perhaps she was the tiniest bit glad now. It felt very odd, this kind of gladness, - if it were gladness, - not a but jubilant, but somehow restful. She did not ache quite so hard inside. If she could grow more glad, perhaps in time she would not ache at all. It was worth trying.
In the days that followed, Barbara found her roommate somewhat silent and tired. Wally and Frances also noticed the change in Doris. These two drew their own conclusions, and unobtrusively redoubled their tenderness for her. Doris said nothing to them about next year, for the simple reason that she did not as yet know whether she had anything to say. She wished this year could go on longer. Doris disliked changes.
"You're studying too hard, Dorry," Barbara said to her. "You ought to let up a bit this weather."
"I haven't studied this week more than enough to keep me going."
"You're not worrying about me?"
"Why should I? Aren't you working?"
"Positively, I can't any more. Not until the weather changes."
"I don't understand."
"Neither do I. Only when I try to work, my brain feels the way my body would if I had on every stitch of winter clothes this minute. It won't go."
"Make it go."
"I can't. It's getting worse all the time. I'm going to try a change."
"You mean -"
"For one solid week I'm going to do exactly what I want to. If I want to study, I'll study. If I don't, I won't. I've figured it out this way, Dorry: If I tell myself I needn't, maybe I'll want to. And even if it doesn't act quite like that, after I've broken over and done something really crazy, I'll be ready to work."
"You'll be up to your eyes in back work and crazier than ever to play."
Barbara's eyes sparkled. "Wait and see."
"A week is too long."
"Not a day too long."
Into Doris's eyes, as she looked at Barbara, crept a horrid doubt. Had she been mistaken? What kind of a girl was Barbara? The girl the registrar had feared, the girl of willing intentions but of slack purpose, abounding in good nature, unstable, lovable, weak? For a minute the world reeled round Doris's head. Then it righted itself.
"What makes you look at me like that?" Barbara was asking.
"Because," flashed Doris, "I want to see whether you are you."
"Am I?"
"Not when you talk that way."
"Oh, come now, Dorry, you're hitting too stiff a pace. Lots of girls -"
From the desk, where she was gathering up her books, Doris turned on her. "Barbara Leighton, if I couldn't stick to a thing - after last January - I'd be ashamed to say so. I'd make myself, though it wore me to a thread. I wouldn't care what I had or didn't have, if I only stuck. And as for saying things like those you've just been saying to me, I'd rather have the ground open and swallow me up. Can't you see that you're only playing tricks on yourself? You're trying to make yourself think that you want to work, and that a vacation will help you, when the truth is you only want an excuse to put off working just as long as you can!"
Barbara stood aghast at this explosion. She would as soon have expected a splutter of speech from her fountain pen as such a storm of words from her gentle roommate.
"You little fire-eater!"
Doris folded the theme she had been writing.
"But, Dorry, you don't understand. I -"
"Bab," said Doris, "I never want to hear another word on this subject. You've been here long enough to know what happens to people who don't study in college. It doesn't matter why they don't study, if they don't. But it's their own fault, and they know it, no matter how much they may try to think it isn't. Good-by! I'm due at English."
"Now what do you know about that!" Barbara ejaculated, as the door closed. "You struck rock that time, Bab Leighton, and in Dorry - Dorry! But she's wrong about one thing. That wasn't the reason for my planning a week off - hold on, though! May it was, too. Let me think."
After a minute or two Barbara began to laugh. "Dorry's keen. She certainly is keen. How on earth could she know that, when I didn't know it myself?"
She nodded at Miss Frayne's picture on the wall. "She's all right, Aunt Annabel, even if she can be a spitfire. You had good taste in girls."
Then her eyes dropped to Janet Bland's picture on her desk. "I'll never be Phi Beta Kappa, like you," she said, wistfully. "I wouldn't be now, if I worked like a dog every day of my life. I've been conditioned. And I'd like to be like you. You're the right sort. But it's no good crying over spilled milk. Doris thinks I'm going to spill some more, but I'm not. Of course I'm not.
"'Work, work, that's what the bells say,'" Barbara hummed, as she reached for Doris's lexicon.
Through the north window she saw paths bright with girls. The sight quickened her pulse beats. She might not in some ways have made much of a success of her freshman year, but at least she had made friends. With the girls she had come into her own. She could count on their love and loyalty. The moving figures thrilled her with a sense of happiness and power. Then she spread the dictionary open on the desk and set to work.
"Has Bab been working in math lately?" Doris asked Wally, after the English class.
"Not so that you could notice it much," the fat girl said, reluctantly.
"Since when?"
"Since vacation. That's not so long."
Doris turned in at her own door with a worried wrinkle between her eyebrows. On her desk she found two notes. One was from Captain Dick, asking her to take part in the dance of flowers and bees on May Day. The other was a penciled scrawl:
"Dear Dorry. I worked an hour and a half, so cheer up. Then Syna Martyn came, and Tiny came, and a lot more came, - including the cat, who was brought, - and now we're all off for a tramp and supper in the woods. Never too busy to eat. Bab.
Doris blushed with pleasure over the first note. What fun to be in the May-Day dances on the hill! But how had they happened to ask her? It was girls like Bab and Migs and Frances who were asked to do things like that.
Over the second note she smiled and sighed, and the frown, which had been smoothed away by Captain Dick's request, returned, a faint shadow of its former self. Dear Barbara! You could not stay angry with her when she would not be angry with you.
"But I wish she had been the least bit cross," sighed Doris. "It would make me feel safer. She does just what she wants to, even now. Of course it's all right to go off in the woods this way. You can't work all the time. But I wish I knew what she'll do next."
Doris stood, twisting the note in her fingers, with anxiety deepening in her heart.
"If she doesn't stick now, she never will. O dear, I'm scared. But she's not that kind. She's not! I won't have her that kind!"