"At any rate," replied Olivia, "a little experience would do you no harm." She suddenly sat up in bed. "A splendid idea!" she exclaimed. "Why not come to Battle Field with me?" "I'd like it," said Pauline, always eager for self-improvement and roused by Olivia's stories of her college experiences. "But father'd never let me go to Battle Field College." "Battle Field UNIVERSITY," corrected Olivia. "It has classical courses and scientific courses and a preparatory school--and a military department for men and a music department for women. And it's going to have lots and lots of real university schools--when it gets the money. And there's a healthy, middle-aged wagon-maker who's said to be thinking of leaving it a million or so--if he should ever die and if they should change its name to his." "But it's coeducation, isn't it? Father would never consent. It was all mother could do to persuade him to let me go to public school." "But maybe he'd let you go with me, where he wouldn't let you go all alone." And so it turned out. Colonel Gardiner, anxious to get his daughter away from Saint X and into new scenes where Dumont might grow dim, consented as soon as Olivia explained her plan. Instead of entering "senior prep", Pauline was able to make freshman with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha Kappa, joined the woman's literary and debating society, and was fascinated and absorbed by crowding new events, associations, occupations, thoughts. In spite of herself her old-time high spirits came flooding back. She caught herself humming--and checked herself reproachfully. She caught herself singing--and lowered it to humming. She caught herself whistling--and decided that she might as well be cheerful while she waited for fate to befriend her and Jack. And she found that she thought about him none the less steadfastly for thinking hopefully. Battle Field put no more restraint upon its young women than it put upon its young men--and it put no restraint upon the young men. In theory and practice it was democratic, American, western--an outgrowth of that pioneer life in which the men and the women had fought and toiled and enjoyed, side by side, in absolute equality, with absolute freedom of association. It recognized that its students had been brought up in the free, simple, frank way, that all came from a region where individualism was a religion, with self-reliance as the cardinal principle of faith and self-development as the goal. There were no dormitories at Battle Field then. Olivia and Pauline lived in one of the hundred or more boarding-houses--a big, square, white "frame," kept by a Mrs. Trent, the widow of a "hero of two wars."