Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/216

 to the main campus, at the place where they must part. The Scientific School, where David was to enter, stood just across the road, showing a brick-columned entranceway with heavy iron gates and a hurrying throng passing out and in. The two had been discussing the future year most earnestly when they set out, but the talk had languished and they had fallen quite silent now. Hundreds of people, it seemed, were hastening past them, all young, all eager, all absorbed in their varied errands.

"I dread a little," Betsey confessed at last; "it is so new and strange and different. I wanted so much to come here, but now, just at the last minute, I would be glad to go home again."

David nodded.

"I feel the same way," he agreed. "But I think anything big enough to be worth while is bound to be dreaded a little too. The feeling won't last long. Well, the bell is ringing, we must go on, I think."

They said good-by and turned to go in their opposite directions. Beyond the vine-covered arch a great bell was swinging in one of those same towers that they had watched across the valley, a silvery, sweet-voiced bell, for all the greatness of its sound. Betsey walked forward, surrounded more and more by hurrying companions, a few of them girls from her school whom she knew, many, many of them strangers, but all looking as though they might some