It was therefore with both delight and surprise that, just before starting for Europe, Miss Hungerford received a rather gloomy letter from her young cousin, who said that with such a brilliant example before her, and deeply impressed by the weighty arguments in her cousin’s letter, she had told the Harvard man that she was much too young and ignorant to marry, and fully convinced that society was a hollow sham, she had determined to devote the next four years to those pursuits which had raised her cousin so far above the ordinary girl. She was even greatly interested, she said, in her preparations for the entrance examinations which she would take at Philadelphia, and the chances of her being admitted. Miss Hungerford was quite touched by the little tribute to herself contained in the letter, and wrote a most cordial answer, and rather upbraided herself for having thought so lightly of her cousin. But her mother seemed to be distressingly sceptical about Margaret’s heroic determination, and said she shouldn’t wonder if some misunderstanding with the Harvard man were not at the bottom of it. But Miss Hungerford was confident that such a lofty purpose could have been born only of some noble sentiment, and refused to have her faith in her young cousin shaken by such a supposition. When Miss Wright got off the train at the pretty little station, she found herself in the midst of a sufficiently large crowd of young women, all of whom seemed to be aggravatingly well acquainted with each other, and who set about in a most business-like way to get where they wanted to go, some taking “barges” and omnibuses, others striking out easily over the roads in the direction of the college. Being totally unfamiliar with the place and somewhat bewildered by the number of girls, Miss Wright thought she would simply take a carriage and get up to the college as quickly as possible. She never told anyone but her best friend what were her sensations on reaching the big building and being “numbered” for an interview with one of the assistant professors, instead of seeing the president herself, as she had expected to do; or how hurt she felt at being totally ignored by the vast majority of busy, rather severe-looking young women, or how grateful she felt to a patronizing Sophomore who talked to her kindly, if condescendingly, for a few moments and who took her through unending corridors to her rooms. Later in the day she found two or three girls who wore tailor-made travelling gowns and seemed ill at ease, and they all huddled together in a corner of one of the big corridors and talked rather helplessly to each other. They would have liked to know what the peals on the big Japanese bell meant, and if they were expected to do anything about it, but they were afraid to ask anyone, because they were not sure which were the professors and which the students.