"Oh, I had hoped that would be my room-mate's seat. Where will she sit?" "Why, of course you didn't know that Miss Fairfax is to wait on table here and so will not have a regular table seat." At these words Jean's expression changed and she looked so astonished that Anna said softly, "You know, dear, some of the girls who haven't much money pay their board by waiting on table. Lots of girls do it, and it's perfectly all right. Some of the best girls I ever knew worked their way through college." Jean said nothing, but she was bitterly disappointed. Why couldn't her room-mate have been Miss Remington or some one equally attractive? She was already beginning to wish that she'd been fortunate enough to draw a single room. If Nan Maitlandt had wished to have her cousin make a favorable impression on the other girls in Merton she certainly succeeded in doing so. Jean was tall and broad-shouldered, with a splendidly developed figure, a perfect picture of health and strength. She had masses of yellow hair which she wore this morning coiled in thick braids round her well-shaped head. Her eyes were dark and her skin, naturally fair, was now somewhat tanned from her out-of-door life. She wore a severe white linen dress with a turned down collar and a bow of black which set off her style of beauty to perfection. She carried herself well and with head held high in the air she had entered the room almost unconscious of its occupants. The girls stared for a moment and then whispered comments on her beauty and wondered who she could be. Mrs. Thompson soon went the rounds of the tables introducing the new girls until at length everybody knew everybody else. There were about a hundred girls seated at the three long tables and only here and there appeared a vacant seat. At Jean's table there were five freshmen besides herself, and much to her satisfaction she soon discovered her acquaintance of the day before, Miss Remington, half way down the other side of the table. Peggy Allison and her room-mate were at the first table at the opposite end from Jean, but they waved her a hearty welcome, even at that distance. She looked at the girls around her laughing and talking and seeming so perfectly at home and she had to admit to herself that they were a happy lot and if so many girls found college such good fun there ought to be something in it for her. Most of the conversation at her end of the table seemed to be on summer vacations and proposed studies for the coming year. Just beyond Nan sat a freshman named Miss Samson, who after some deliberation found the courage to lean forward a little and ask Jean if she had decided what studies to take. Jean answered cordially in the negative and added that her cousin was to help her choose them later on. She was conditioned in French, so she supposed she'd have to take that, although she hated it thoroughly.