Page:Fidelia, (IA fidelia00balm).pdf/24

 especially when starting out with new people in a strange place and, having formed the habit, she kept it up.

When she heard the door opening, she drew herself more erect and gave a tug to her coat collar. She got a glimpse of a long, brown, rather bare hall and she was aware of the odors of meat and vegetables cooking; then she saw a middle-aged, slender, spectacled woman in a plain blue dress.

"This is Mrs. Fansler's?" Fidelia asked in her pleasant way.

"I am Mrs. Fansler," the woman said, in much more neutral tone but giving the impression that she meant to be more neutral than she succeeded in being.

"How do you do? I'm Fidelia Netley from White Falls. Do you remember I wrote you for a room and asked you to telegraph if you could give me one and you were so nice as to do it?"

"Come in, child," invited Mrs. Fansler.

It was the quickest melting of Mrs. Fansler on record, as was unanimously agreed by all four girls in the upper hall who were looking and listening to learn who had arrived in that cab. "Child" was Mrs. Fansler's admission of approval of a girl; and the college record for thawing her to that point was three days, ten hours and some exactly estimated minutes. "Which record was absolutely smashed to practically nothing at all," the witnesses deposed. "And from a flat, standing start!"

Some girls abode under Mrs. Fansler's roof throughout their college course and never achieved "child" at all.