We were a jolly set; most of us poor as church mice, and caring little. Making rather a boast of it, indeed. John Burke's roommate, Jim Reeder, cooked his own meals--mostly oatmeal--in his room and lived on less than a dollar a week until fairly starved. I suppose they'll call him "old Hoss" to his dying day. Until his mother moved to town, John was almost as ill-fed. He was just completing his law course when I was a Freshman, and used to make brave jests at poverty, even after his admission to the bar. Of course I was glad to meet him again, and, though I was puzzled just at first, to see how little older than I my former teacher was, yet afterwards--why, I haven't answered his last--I don't know how many letters; I simply must remember to write to him! I think the best part of the teaching wasn't in the books. Some of the students were queer and uncouth when they came, the boys eating with their knives in the fashion of the farm; some of the brightest girls in ill-fitting clothes--perfect guys they'd be thought in the city. But there were others of quite different manner, and from them and from professors who had seen the world, we learned a little--a very little--of its ways. And perhaps we were not unfavourable specimens of young republicanism, with our merry, hopeful outlook upon life, and our future governors and senators all in the raw--yes, and our countesses and vice-reines! CHAPTER IV GIRL BACHELOR AND BIOLOGIST Merrily flew the years and almost before I realised it came graduation. In the leafy dark of the village street, in the calm of a perfect June night, John Burke told me that he loved me, and I plighted my troth to him. We laid plans as we bade each other good-by, to meet again--perhaps--in New York in the fall; and even that little separation seemed so long. We did not guess that the weeks would grow to months, and--oh, dear, what will he think of me when he gets here? And what--now--shall I say to him? Father for the first time visited college to see me graduate. Between his pride in my standing at the head of my class and his discomfort in a starched collar, he was a prey to conflicting emotions all Commencement week, and heaved a great sigh of relief when at last the train that bore us home pulled out of the station. But as we approached our own he again grew uneasy, and kept peering out at the car window as if on the watch for something. At length we descended in front of the long yellow box we called the "deepo." And there was Joe Lavigne to meet us, not with the democrat wagon, but with a very new and shiny top buggy. When we reached the farmhouse, I saw proofs of a loving conspiracy. The addition of a broad veranda and a big bay window, with the softening effect of the young trees that had grown up all around the place, made it look much more homelike than the bare box that had sheltered my childhood. A new hammock swung between two of the trees.