“I’ll do all I can to help Melissa,” said Molly, her eyes still misty over the letter concerning the childhood of the mountain girl. “She interests me deeply.” Then Molly and Miss Walker plunged into a talk about what Molly was to study. English Literature and Composition were of course the big things, but she was also anxious to take up some special work in Domestic Science, a new and very complete equipment having been recently installed at Wellington and a highly recommended teacher, a graduate from the Boston school, being in charge. “Miss Hathaway is to do work on that line, too, and I fancy you will be put into the same division. She is preparing herself to help her mountain people, and I think they need domestic science even more than they do higher mathematics.” Molly escorted Melissa to her small room in the Quadrangle, where she was duly and gratefully installed. Her shyness was passing off with Nance and Molly, and now they noticed that she never made the slips into the mountain vernacular. But on meeting strangers, or when embarrassed in any way, she would unconsciously drop into it, and then become more embarrassed. She never let herself off, but always bit her lip and quickly repeated her remark in the proper English. “She is really almost as foreign as little Otoyo Sen,” said Nance. CHAPTER II.—LEVITY IN THE LEAVEN. “Molly, do you know you are a grown-up lady?” asked Nance a few days after they had settled themselves and were back in the grind of work. “I have been seeing it in all kinds of ways; firstly, you have gained in weight.” “Only three pounds, and that could not show much, spread over such a large area,” laughed Molly. “Well, you look more rounded, somehow. Then I notice you keep your pumps on and don’t kick them off every time you sit down; and when you do sit down you don’t always lie down as you used to do. Now, I have always been a grown-up little old lady, but you were a child when you left college last June, and now you are a beautiful, dignified woman.”