astounded Freshman I dashed out.

My father had said, "If neither of you changes your mind while Carl is
away, I have no objection to your becoming engaged." In about ten
minutes after his return we were formally engaged, on a bench up in the
Deaf and Dumb Asylum grounds--our favorite trysting-place. It would have
been foolish to waste a new dress on that night. I was clad in cloth of
gold for all Carl knew or cared, or could see in the dark, for that
matter. The deserted Freshman was sound asleep when I got back--and
joined another sorority.

Thereafter, for a time, Carl went into University Extension, lecturing
on Trade-Unionism and South Africa. It did not please him altogether,
and finally my father, a lawyer himself, persuaded him to go into law.
Carl Parker in law! How we used to shudder at it afterwards; but it was
just one more broadening experience that he got out of life.

Then came the San Francisco earthquake. That was the end of my Junior
year, and we felt we had to be married when I finished college--nothing
else mattered quite as much as that. So when an offer came out of a
clear sky from Halsey and Company, for Carl to be a bond-salesman on a
salary that assured matrimony within a year, though in no affluence, and
the bottom all out of the law business and no enthusiasm for it anyway,
we held a consultation and decided for bonds and marriage. What a
bond-salesman Carl made! Those who knew him knew what has been referred
to as "the magic of his personality," and could understand how he was
having the whole of a small country town asking him to dinner on his
second visit.

I somehow got through my Senior year; but how the days dragged! For all