“As for the Sphinx,” went on the Infant, happy in the unusual feat of holding the attention of the girls, “the poor Sphinx can’t get married because she never says enough for a man to know whether it’s yes or no. She will just keep on loving her pyramids and cones, and teaching algebraic riddles, until she dies. Knowledge will always look so dignified that she will frighten men away. Father exclaimed to me, when he met her, ‘What a lovely, calm, classical face!’ I said, ‘Yes, that is our Knowledge all over.’ And you can imagine how I felt when she opened those dignified lips of hers and remarked conversationally, ‘Say! Isn’t it hot as hot?’” The girls laughed at poor Knowledge, and the cruel Infant continued to read the future. “Well, all of us will get presentation copies of Bab’s great work, even I, who will be making home happy ‘if no one comes to marry me’”— “‘And I don’t see why they should,’” finished Barbara, cuttingly. She rapped the Inspired Soothsayer on her fluffy head with a curtain-rod. “Your mind runs on matrimony to a disgusting extent, Infant,” she warned. “I shall never marry unless I can carry on my writing.” “And be a second Mrs. Jellyby?” inquired her friend. “All right; I’ll come to live with you and keep the little Jellybys out of the gravy while you unveil the characters of some Horace and Viola to the admiring world. Oh, girls! The fudge is gone, and it’s twelve o’clock, and even _my_ eyelids will not stay apart much longer.” The girls rose slowly from their improvised chairs, and stood together, half-unconsciously taking note of the dear, familiar room in its dismantled, unfamiliar condition. Out in the corridor a few unseen classmates began to sing, “Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus—” “What on earth are they gaudeamusing about to-night?” growled the Infant; but no one answered her. They stood looking at each other in silence. “Some of you I won’t see again,” said Barbara, in a wavering voice. “My train goes so early. Dear, dear Sphinxy,—and Atalanta—” An odd, snuffling sound caused her to look around. “The Infant’s crying!” she exclaimed. The Infant threw her arms about Barbara’s neck. “I guess I have feelings,” she sobbed, “if I did try to make things cheerful. Don’t forget me, Babbie dear, for I do love you astonishingly, and expect great things from you.” Barbara hurried blindly down the corridor, with the faithful House Plant beside her. At the end she turned, and faintly saw the four white figures still watching her. They were looking their last at their beloved companion, the girl whose strength of character and instinctive leadership had first attracted, then held them together, through four eventful years at college. Barbara waved her handkerchief at the silent figures, and her head dropped on her room-mate’s shoulder as they neared their familiar door. “Oh, Helen dear!” she sobbed. “How can we ever leave this college?” CHAPTER II HOME