a parody of one of Kipling's "Barrack-Room Ballads" which Madeline Ayres had written one morning during a philosophy lecture that bored her, and which the whole college was singing a week later.
It was great fun exercising all the new senior privileges. One of the first and most exciting was occupying the front seats at morning chapel.
"Although," complained Betty Wales sadly, "you don't get much good out of that, if your name begins with a W. Of course I am glad there are so many of 19--, but they do take up a lot of room. Nobody could tell that Eleanor and I were seniors, unless they knew it beforehand."
"And then they wouldn't believe it about you," retorted Madeline, the tease.
Madeline, being an A, was one of the favored front row, who were near enough "to catch Prexy's littlest smiles," as Helen Adams put it, and who were the observed of all observers as they marched, two and two, down the middle aisle, just behind the faculty. Madeline, being tall and graceful and always perfectly self-possessed, looked very impressive, but little Helen Adams was dreadfully frightened and blushed to the roots of her smooth brown hair every morning.
"And yet I wouldn't give it up for anything," she confided to Betty. "I mean--I'll exchange with you any time, but I do just love to sit there, although I dread walking out so. It's just the same when I am talking to Miss Raymond or Miss Mills. I wish I weren't such a goose."
"You're a very dear little goose," Betty reassured her, wondering why in the world the clever Helen Adams was afraid of people, while she, who was only little Betty Wales, without much brains and with no big talent, felt perfectly at home with Dr. Hinsdale, Miss Raymond, and even the great "Prexy" himself.
"I suppose that is my talent," she decided at last,--"not being afraid, and just plunging right in. Well, I suppose I ought to be glad that I have anything."
Another senior privilege is the holding of the first class-meeting. Fresh indeed is the freshman class which neglects this order of precedence, and in deference to their childish impatience the seniors always hold their meeting as early in the term as possible. Of course 19--'s came on a lovely afternoon,--the first after an unusually long and violent "freshman rain."