HE fifteen dollars, after all, were disposed of in a highly satisfactory manner. They paid for Lydia's senior cap and gown. Perhaps there were other members of the class to whom their senior insignia meant as much as they did to Lydia, but that is to be doubted.
Although, ever since her illness, she had firmly resolved never to worry again over her meager wardrobe, she almost wept with joy when she first beheld herself in cap and gown. For she looked exactly like other girls! It didn't matter at all, this year, whether or not she had a new suit or a new overcoat. The gown was all-concealing. Donning it was like turning from caterpillar to butterfly with a single wave of the hand.
Amos and Lizzie were as much impressed as Lydia, but for different reasons. Lizzie was sure that the gown was proof and evidence that Lydia had compassed all human knowledge.
"Land, Lydia," she murmured, walking slowly around the slender figure, "it makes you look terrible dignified and I'm glad of that. No one could look at you now and not feel that you know an awful lot."
Amos was unimpressed by Lydia's stores of wisdom but it seemed to him that there never was such a lovely face as that which looked out at him from under the mortar-board cap. There was a depth to the clear blue eyes, a sweetness to the red lips, that moved him so that for a moment he could not speak.
"It's an awful pretty idea, wearing the cap and gown, isn't it!" he said, finally. "Somewhere, back East, there's a picture of one of your ancestors who taught in an English college. You look something like him."
"Did I have that kind of an ancestor?" asked Lydia with interest. "Isn't it too bad that we Americans don't know anything about our forebears. I wonder what the old duck would say if he could see me!"
It was the rainiest Fall within Lydia's recollection. It seemed, after the drought was once broken, as if nature would never leave off trying to compensate for the burning summer. The dark weather had a very depressing effect on Amos and instead of growing more resigned to his friend's death, he seemed to Lydia to become daily more morose and irritable.
In a way, Lydia's conscience smote her. She knew that her father was worrying over her attitude on her inheritance, but she continued to avoid the issue with him while the estate was being settled. Lydia was doing heavy work in college. She actually had entered all the classes in dairying possible, while carrying her other college work. And she enjoyed the new work amazingly.
She had not mentioned her purpose to any one of her friends but Billy. Therefore when Professor Willis, showing some Eastern visitors through the dairy building, came upon her washing cream bottles one afternoon, he was rendered entirely speechless for a moment.
Lydia, in a huge white dairy apron and cap, was sluicing the bottles happily, the only girl in a class of a dozen men, when Willis came in, followed by two tall men in eyeglasses.
"Queer, I admit, to find this sort of thing in a college," he was saying, "but decidedly interesting, nevertheless. Well, Miss Dudley, are you—I didn't know—I beg your pardon."
The class, which was working without an instructor, looked up in astonishment. Lydia blushed furiously and the two visitors looked on with obvious interest.
"It's a class in bottle sterilizing," she explained. "It just happens to be my turn."
The look of relief on Willis' face made Lydia angry. She turned her back on him and proceeded to let a cloud of steam envelop her and her bottles.
"The idiot! He thought I was dish-washing for a living, I suppose," she murmured to herself. "What business is it of his, anyhow?"
How Willis got rid of his two guests, he did not say, but half an hour later, when Lydia emerged from the dairy building, he was waiting for her. There was a quiet drizzle of rain, as was usual this Fall, and Lydia was wearing her old coat, with her mortar-board. But it was clear that the professor of Shakespeare did not know what she wore. It was a half mile through the University farm to the street-car and he wanted to re-establish himself with Lydia before some other swain appeared.
"Tell me what this means, Miss Dudley!" he said eagerly as he raised his umbrella to hold it carefully over the mortar-board.
"It looks as though it meant rain, to me," replied Lydia, shortly.
Willis gave a little gasp. "Oh! I beg your pardon!"
His chagrin made Lydia ashamed of herself. "I don't see why you should be so shocked at my trying to learn something useful," she said.