Page:Middle Aged Love Stories (IA middleagedlove00bacorich).djvu/127

 drop in. This hostess invited favored students to meet the faculty and townspeople on these occasions, and the two latter classes were expected to effect a social fusion with the former—which linked it, to some minds, a little too obviously with professional duties.

She might call on the head of her department, who was suffering from some slight indisposition, and receive minute advice as to the conduct of her classes, mingled with general criticism of various colleagues and their methods. She might make a number of calls; but if there is one situation in which the futility of these social mockeries becomes most thoroughly obvious, it is the situation presented by an attempt to imitate the conventional society life in a woman’s college. And yet—she had gone over the whole question so often—what a desert of awkwardness and learned provincialism such a college would be without the attempt! How often she had cordially agreed to