My room-mate's name was Gabriella Atherton, but when I entered the room which I was supposed to share with her I wished she had been plain Mary Jane. The bureau was simply loaded with silver things--silver brushes and mirrors and powder-boxes, and at least three silver frames with the stunningest men's pictures in them you ever saw. The walls were covered with college flags, and the window-seat was banked with college sofa-cushions. Why, I didn't know a single man, except high school boys, great awkward creatures like the twins. I hoped Gabriella wouldn't find out that I had never been to a college football game in my life, nor been invited to one either. My one last hope for consolation lay in the possibility that Gabriella was older than I. I thought she must be at least twenty to know so many men. When we were finally alone, getting ready to go to bed I asked her. My heart sank when she announced that she was only sixteen. I know exactly how a mother feels now when another person's baby born a month before hers talks first and shows signs of greater intelligence. I remember I was standing before my chiffonier braiding my hair for the night, pulling it flat back as I always did and fixing it in one tight short little braid, when Gabriella announced she was sixteen. Why, she looked old enough to be married, and I--I gazed at my reflection--I looked like poor Sarah Carew in the garret. No wonder the family wanted to send the old spoon away to be polished. No wonder! "One of the girls," Gabriella went on to say, "has had a Box from home. She's asked the whole school to a Kimono Spread in her room. Do you want to go?" A Spread! My heart leaped! And then I got a glimpse of Gabriella in the glass before me. She was a vision in a flowing pink silk kimono with white birds on it. She had her hair fluffed up on top and tied with a wide pink taffeta ribbon--she actually slept in it--and little pink shoes on her feet. "I guess I won't to-night, thanks," I said, not turning around, for I didn't want her to see what a peeled onion I looked like; "the train made me car-sick." And I snapped the elastic band around the end of my braid. After Gabriella had gone I turned out the light and crawled into the little brass bed, which Miss Brown had said was mine; but I didn't go to sleep. I just lay there listening to the muffled laughter and chatter at the end of the hall. It was only nine o'clock and lights were not due to be out until ten. I hated lying there wide awake and I kept wondering how I could get dressed in the morning without letting my room-mate see all my plain ugly things. Then I remembered that I had left my common cheap little wooden brush, the shellac all washed off with weekly scrubbings, on top of my chiffonier. I jumped up quickly and hid it in the top drawer; then suddenly I turned on the light, sat down in my horrid red wool wrapper, and wrote something like this to Alec, blubbering and dabbing tears all through it: "_Dear Alec_,