"We have ever striven to maintain here an attitude of sweetness and light, and to exclude everything of a nature disturbing to young ladies of immature mind. Cosma is not only opinionated, but her knowledge and experience are out of harmony with the knowledge and experience of our clientèle. We have regretfully concluded to suggest to you, therefore, that she be entered elsewhere to complete her course. "Thanking you, my dear Mrs. Carney, we beg to remain, "Respectfully yours, "MATILDA MANNERS, "EMILY SPOT." CHAPTER XII I drop five years--so much in the living, so little in the retrospect! Upon that time I entered with one thought: The university. At the school I had always been ahead of my class, a meager enough accomplishment there. I had browsed through the books of the third- and fourth-year girls, glad that I found so little that I could not have mastered then. Now, at Mrs. Carney's suggestion and with her help, I took some tutoring; and, what with overwork and summer sessions and entering "special" once more, I made the university, and, toward the close of my fifth year, was nearing my graduation. A part of my expenses I had paid myself. And how did I do that? By making lace for Mrs. Keddie Bingy! Life is so wonderful that it makes you afraid, and it makes you glad, and it makes you sure. In the first year after I left Miss Spot and Miss Manners, I read in one of the papers that John Ember had gone to China on an expedition which was to spend two years in the interior. I wouldn't have believed that the purpose could have dropped so completely out of everything--school, town, life, I myself, became something different. Until then I had not realized how much I had been living in the thought that I was somewhere near him; that any day I might see him in the street, in the cars, anywhere. It was hard to get used to knowing that somebody coming down at the far end of the street could not possibly be he; that no list of names in the paper could have his name. But just as, that first morning, I knew that he wouldn't want me to give up and cry, so now I knew that I had to go ahead anyway, and do the best I could. It was what he would have wanted. And I had only just begun to make myself different. I had only just shown myself how much there was, really, to be different about.