"Before we come to speak of the purpose for which we are gathered here this morning," she begins, her smile expressing perfect appreciation of the suspense that racks her audience, "I should like to make some announcements of general interest to the students." The strained attention of her hearers all over the Chapel breaks in hardly audible catches of the breath. Those unheard announcements give time for further speculation as to the candidate. Marjorie is eagerly leaning forward, too impatient-looking for one who knows the Thing--so it can't be Eleanor, decide the sagest critics. Kate Murray is abnormally flushed, Carroll correspondingly pale. It must be Carroll--she looks so subdued--so unexcited. Those announcements are over. The President unfolds an innocent-looking bit of paper. The honour list of ten, from whom the Fellow has been chosen, is read. "Is it she?" is the tacit question of the crowd at each name. Then---- "The decision has been difficult," says the President impressively. "After long and earnest discussion the Faculty has nominated to the Board of Trustees, as European Fellow for the coming year----" A pause. The weighted silence seems to stifle one. "Eleanor Whitcomb Mertoun!" A roar shatters the air--or is it the roof?--a shout of generous gladness mingled with the hearty clamour of hand and heel. The pent-up eagerness to know is changed into the longing to honour the chosen candidate, and it bursts forth and swirls tumultuously about Eleanor like the Fundy tide. It rises, falls, rises again, twenty feet at a leap. Marjorie is meantime pounding Eleanor's knee, and exclaiming to every one within reach, "I knew it! I knew it!" as though some especial credit were due her for having been told the secret. Kate Murray, on the other side, was dragging Eleanor down by the neck, as if she would unseat from its firm base the head whose market value had risen 100% in five minutes. Decorum returns for a moment when the President dismisses the students with the request that they sing the college hymn; and they sing it as can only those that have felt the "gracious inspiration" of our "Mistress and Mother." When it is over, there is a rush for Lee Mertoun from all sides, for it is _de rigueur_ to shake the new Fellow's hand very nearly to the maiming of that revered member. For ten minutes she clasps hands, hardly recognizing their owners in the press; and then gradually, as the bell rings for first lectures, the crowd melts out of the chapel. As Lee, Marjorie, Kate, and Carroll left the room Marjorie ran her arm through that of the warm and red recipient of blushing honours and facing her quickly about, pointed tragically with her pen at the almost deserted confusion of chairs helplessly awry. "There, woman," she said, "a picture of that might with great plausibility be labelled 'Charleston after the Earthquake.' That is all your fault, and it is what you have got to live up to."