Pamela Dean Read Free

responsible and sane letter about the college, just as though Janet's father had not taught here for twenty-two years.
    "Who was she?" said Janet, still tugging her brother along but aware of the necessity of being civil. Luckily, Andrew was cute and redheaded, and the four girls in the hall were regarding him benignly.
    "Classics major," said a short black student, as if that explained everything.
    Everybody at Blackstock who was not a member of the Classics Department talked like that. Janet had never met a Classics major; the professors she had met from that department seemed no more peculiar than those of any other. But it was one of Blackstock's tenets.
    They will never fix the Music and Drama Center; it always snows on Parents' Weekend; Classics majors are crazy.
    "What class?" Of course, they might have chosen her as the butt of one of the innumerable jokes played on freshmen; faculty brats were favorite targets.
    "Ninety-nine," said an even smaller girl with glasses.
    "Janet Margaret Carter," said Lily from the doorway, "come unpack these books."
    "I'll see you at the meeting tonight," Janet said generally, lugged her brother back into the room, and banged the door shut.
    Her mother was leaning out one of the windows; her father was sitting on her desk.
    "Look what you made your mother do," he said.
    "You made her do it," said Janet, more or less automatically. She let go of Andrew but stayed between him and the door. "She couldn't stand to hear any more about how nobody in the entire Department of Humane Letters at Harvard—not that there is one—is doing anything but painstakingly reconstructing Aristotle." Having delivered her standard speech, she absorbed what her mother had threatened—to throw The Wind in the Willows out a fourth-floor window. She said with much more force, "Mom, how could you?"
    "Colgate," said her mother, not turning from the window. Her voice was unnaturally calm for the subject they were discussing. The morning sunshine haloed her red head. "Or Cornell, maybe—the little one, that is."
    "It's too late now," said Janet. "Why don't you all just go home now, and I'll come for Sunday supper in a month or two."
    "Walk down with us and get your book," said her mother.
    The book had landed flat on its front in a clump of dandelions. Janet brushed it off and felt the binding tenderly. It had been so battered already, any new damage was hard to locate. Her mother had given it to her on her eighth birthday, and if Janet had ever thrown any book anywhere her mother would probably have put her on bread and water and Eugene Field for a week. It must be very stressful after all, sending your oldest child off to college, even if college was about ten blocks away.
    Andrew, fidgeting about and scuffing his feet on the sidewalk, said, "Dad, those girls say there's a ghost in Jan's room."
    "On Fourth Ericson?" said her father. "Is it the same old story, or a new one? What sort of ghost?"
    "Classics major!" said Andrew, and laughed immoderately.
    "Ha ha," said his father. "You know it's time to replace the campus joke when small boys find it funny."
    "Better the Classics Department than yours," said Janet's mother. "I shudder to think what they could find to say about the English Department if they put their minds to it."
    "Now, Janet," said her father, oblivious, "don't take English 10 from Brinsley."
    "I know," said Janet. "Senior Seminar from Brinsley. English 10 from Evans if I want to do it right, or Tyler if I want to be usefully irritated. And Chaucer only from Brinsley, and if I'm very, very good, I can take the Romantics from you next year. Go away now, I have to unpack."
    She hugged her parents; gave Andrew a chance to hug her, which he surprised her by taking; and looked speculatively at her sister.
    "I hope you get roommates worse than me," said Lily.
    Well, that was that. She ran up the four flights of red-carpeted steps and encountered another group of girls in the wide hall of the fourth