“What is it now, Katharine?” inquired Miss Yale, reproachfully, laying down her cards. “She always takes things so terribly _au grand sérieux_,” she explained plaintively to the rest. Miss Yale had her rooms with Miss Atterbury, and stood rather in awe of that young woman, and was very proud of her athletic prowess, and could always be relied upon to tell her friends “that Katharine Atterbury was the captain of the senior crew, and could pull an oar as well as a ’Varsity stroke, and that the champion tennis-player of a certain year had said that she was an antagonist to be feared and respected.” “_This_ is what is the matter,” said Miss Atterbury, in a tragic voice, picking up the paper. “I don’t know who it is that writes such absurd, such wilfully misleading articles about us, but I do know that if I could get at him I would----” What Miss Atterbury would do was apparently too awful to speak of just then. One of the girls got up and went over to her. “But what is it?--what have they said about us now?” she inquired, impatiently. “What they are always doing--poking fun at us,” replied Miss Atterbury, hotly, and with a fine disregard of grammar. “To read this article one would imagine that we were imbecile babies. One would think that a girl was as weak as a kitten, and didn’t know a boat from an elevator, or a five-lap running track from an ice-wagon, or a golf club from a sewing-machine. He--whoever the man is who wrote this ridiculous article--seems to think that all our training and physical development is a huge joke. He don’t even know how stupid he is. That’s the worst of it--he isn’t even aware of his unutterable, his colossal ignorance!” “Wouldn’t it be fun to have him drawn and quartered, as an awful example, a sort of warning to the other newspaper men not to write about what they are totally ignorant of, and to leave us alone,” suggested the inoffensive little freshman, with a base but entirely successful attempt to get back into Miss Atterbury’s good graces. The senior gave her a brief but cordial glance, and then ran on: “Something must be done about it. I’m tired of reading this sort of trash about women’s colleges. It is time the public was learning the true state of things--that girls can and do swim, and row and play golf and tennis, and run and walk about, just as their brothers do, and that we have courage and muscle enough to go in for football even, except that we have some _little_ regard for our personal appearance!” “And it’s so degrading and irritating to go home in the vacations, and have one’s brother tease one to death about it all, and try to be funny, and ask one if the color of one’s gymnasium suit is becoming, and if the golf captain knows the caddie from a cleek,” interposed Miss Thayer, a pretty blond girl who got up slowly and sauntered over to Miss Atterbury, putting her face over that young lady’s shoulder to get a look at the unfortunate paper. As she did so she gave a little cry of surprise.