There was nothing now to prevent her becoming a student of Newnham. Cousin Mary had talked the old Master over and smoothed away all the difficulties. She had wrung from him an unwilling consent. The Senior Tutor had done his part, too, in overcoming the Master's prejudices. He had backed Mary up in the most loyal manner; no girl could have had better advocates. When the Doctor had urged that there had been no precedent in his family of girls construing Latin and Greek when they ought to be making butter and carrying their eggs to market, the Tutor had reminded him that neither had there been a precedent in all the generations of the Raes of one of their number being the Master of a college. He, on his part, had set up a precedent, and Dick's little daughter was going to set up another--perhaps a more astonishing precedent. Lucy Rae went up to Newnham the next term. She ought to have waited until October, when the academical year commences, but she was much too anxious to begin at once. She couldn't wait till October. She had taken a little draught of the divine nectar, and she was thirsting to drink deeply, ever so deeply--deeper than any woman had ever drunk yet. She was going to do very big things, and she couldn't afford to lose a minute. She would gain a whole term's work if she went up now, she would get in ten terms' work instead of nine, like the men, for her Tripos. She would get a whole term's start of them. With this thirst upon her, and this emulation stirring in her heart, Lucy packed her little box and carried it up to Newnham. She did not exactly carry it in her arms like a housemaid going to a new place. It was not far to carry it, and for the weight of it she might have carried it easily, but girls do not generally go to Newnham carrying a bandbox, or a bundle tied up in a coloured pocket-handkerchief, and with two out-at-elbow little brothers lagging behind carrying a shabby box between them. Lucy, alas! had not two out-at-elbow little brothers, and she had respect for the feelings of Newnham, so she drove up to the door of Newe Hall in a hansom, with her modest little box on the roof. She thought it was the happiest, the proudest day of her life, this first day at Newnham. She had been looking forward to it for weeks. She had lain awake all the night before picturing what it would be like, and it was not the least like anything she had pictured. She had pictured sunshine and a blue sky, and the lilacs in the hedge budding, and the daffodils blowing beneath the windows. It was the middle of April, and she had a right to expect these things; it was very little to expect.