Miss Thayer took him back to the station in her trap, and remarked on how much shorter the way seemed with a good horse; and when she bade him good-by she told him that she would be looking out for another article in his paper, and that she would be much disappointed if his visit had not inspired him to write something. To which Newbold replied that that was his pressing engagement--he was going back to the city to write another article on athletics in girls’ colleges, and that he thought it would be different and better than the former one, but that he would not put his initials to it this time. THE COLLEGE BEAUTY It was a sort of farewell party, and the young woman who was going away and who was the object of so much solicitude and tender concern was sitting, enshrined as it were, on a divan covered with a Navahoe Indian blanket and surrounded by innumerable cushions, while the rest hung about her or took up precarious attitudes on the table in dangerous proximity to the student lamps, or settled themselves in steamer-chairs, or sat upon the tiger-skin on the floor. That is, the American girls did; Kan Ato, the pretty Japanese who had come arrayed in a gorgeous new kimono--dull blue embroidered splendidly in silver--sat upright and very stiffly in the window-seat with the dark red of the curtains showing off her jet black hair and her gown wonderfully well; while the tall Scotch girl, a cousin of the guest of honor, had trusted her generous proportions to the only large, comfortable American chair in the room. There was a great deal of noise and confusion and questioning, and Miss Lavington, as she leaned back against her cushions, half wished that after all the doctor had not let her come. She had been very ill--a short, sharp attack of typhoid--and although she had enjoyed tremendously the wine jelly, and the violets, and the hushed, anxious tones of her friends as they inquired after her at the infirmary, and the many remarks about her good qualities and how clever she was in Conic Sections--“just as if she were really dead,” as she said--still she felt rather too weak properly to appreciate her friends’ enthusiastic sympathy at such close range. And then the thought of going away--and so far away--had made her feel blue and dispirited.