treated her as an equal, and was too absorbed in his own affairs to
realize that she needed any companionship but his own, she had been
absolutely swept off her feet by the rush of young life at Harding. The
only close friend she had made there was Mary Brooks; and, though Mary
fully reciprocated Roberta's fondness for her, she was a person of so
many ideas and interests that Roberta was necessarily left a good deal to
herself. During her first year, the sociable atmosphere of the Chapin
house had helped to break down her reserve and bring her, in spite of
herself, into touch with the college world. But now, in a house full of
noisy, rollicking freshmen, who thought her queer and "stuck-up," she was
bitterly unhappy. So she shut herself in with her books and her thoughts,
wondered whether being on the campus would really make any difference in
her feelings about college, and stayed on only because of her devotion to
Mary and her unwillingness to disappoint her father, who was very proud
of "my daughter at Harding."

Roberta loved children, and she and the smallest sister instantly became
fast friends. Will frightened her dreadfully at first, but before the
week was out she found herself chatting with him just as familiarly as
she did with her Boston cousin, who was the only young man she knew well.
And after she had helped Mrs. Wales to trim the smallest sister's
Christmas tree, and been down town with Mr. Wales to pick out some books
for him to give Nan,--"Because you and Nan seem to be cut out of the same
piece of cloth, you see," explained Mr. Wales genially,--Roberta felt
exactly like one of the family, and hoarded the days, and then the hours,
that remained of this blissful vacation.

"It seems as if I couldn't go back," she told Betty, when the good-byes
had all been said, and the long train was rumbling through the darkness
toward Harding.