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."

Her hero had won her with his uniform when he returned from the
Mexican War. His conduct was so irregular and his income so
uncertain that it had been a relief to her when he departed for
his second war. From it he had brought home a broken
constitution, a maimed body and confirmed habits of shiftlessness
and drunkenness. His country took his character and his health
and paid him in exchange a pension which just about kept him in
whisky and tobacco. So long as he was alive Mrs. Trent hated him