The Cost | Page 8

older by three years. She seemed--and for her years,
was--serious and wise because, as the eldest of a large family, she was
lieutenant-general to her mother. Further, she had always had her own
way--when it was the right way and did not conflict with justice to her
brothers and sisters. And often her parents let her have her own way
when it was the wrong way, nor did they spoil the lesson by mitigating
disagreeable consequences.
"Do as you please," her mother used to say, when doing as she pleased
would involve less of mischief than of valuable experience, "and
perhaps you'll learn to please to do sensibly." Again. her father would
restrain her mother from interference--"Oh, let the girl alone. She's got
to teach herself how to behave, and she can't begin a minute too
young." This training had produced a self-reliant and self-governing
Olivia.
She wondered at the change in Pauline--Pauline, the light-hearted, the
effervescent of laughter and life, now silent and almost somber. It was
two weeks before she, not easily won to the confiding mood for all her
frankness, let Olivia into her secret. Of course, it was at night; of course,
they were in the same bed. And when Olivia had heard she came nearer
to the truth about Dumont than had Pauline's mother. But, while she felt
sure there was a way to cure Pauline, she knew that way was not the
one which had been pursued. "They've only made her obstinate," she
thought, as she, lying with hands clasped behind her head, watched
Pauline, propped upon an elbow, staring with dreamful determination
into the moonlight.
"It'll come out all right," she said; her voice always suggested that she
knew what she was talking about. "Your father'll give in sooner or

later--if YOU don't change."
"But he's so bitter against Jack," replied Pauline. "He won't listen to his
side--to our side--of it."
"Anyhow, what's the use of anticipating trouble? You wouldn't get
married yet. And if he's worthwhile he'll wait."
Pauline had been even gentler than her own judgment in painting her
lover for her cousin's inspection. So, she could not explain to her why
there was necessity for haste, could not confess her conviction that
every month he lived away from her was a month of peril to him.
"We want it settled," she said evasively.
"I haven't seen him around anywhere," went on Olivia. "Is he here
now?"
"He's in Chicago--in charge of his father's office there. He may stay all
winter."
"No, there's no hurry," went on Olivia. "Besides, you ought to meet
other men. It isn't a good idea for a girl to marry the man she's been
brought up with before she's had a chance to get acquainted with other
men." Olivia drew this maxim from experience--she had been engaged
to a school-days lover when she went away to Battle Field to college;
she broke it off when, going home on vacation, she saw him again from
the point of wider view.
But Pauline scorned this theory; if Olivia had confessed the broken
engagement she would have thought her shallow and untrustworthy.
She was confident, with inexperience's sublime incapacity for
self-doubt, that in all the wide world there was only one man whom she
could have loved or could love.
"Oh, I shan't change," she said in a tone that warned her cousin against
discussion.
"At any rate," replied Olivia, "a little experience would do you no
harm." She suddenly sat up in bed. "A splendid idea!" she exclaimed.
"Why not come to Battle Field with me?"
"I'd like it," said Pauline, always eager for self-improvement and
roused by Olivia's stories of her college experiences. "But father'd
never let me go to Battle Field College."
"Battle Field UNIVERSITY," corrected Olivia. "It has classical courses
and scientific courses and a preparatory school--and a military
department for men and a music department for women. And it's going

to have lots and lots of real university schools--when it gets the money.
And there's a healthy, middle-aged wagon-maker who's said to be
thinking of leaving it a million or so--if he should ever die and if they
should change its name to his."
"But it's coeducation, isn't it? Father would never consent. It was all
mother could do to persuade him to let me go to public school."
"But maybe he'd let you go with me, where he wouldn't let you go all
alone."
And so it turned out. Colonel Gardiner, anxious to get his daughter
away from Saint X and into new scenes where Dumont might grow dim,
consented as soon as Olivia explained her plan.
Instead of entering "senior prep", Pauline was able to make freshman
with only three conditions. In the first week she was initiated into
Olivia's fraternity, the Kappa Alpha