"Well, you must come if you ever care to," she said, with a big-sister graciousness. "The Dorm chaperon sits there, of course, but ours is a jolly one and you'd like her. You've probably met her--
Mrs. Hustings?--when you've called on other girls at our old shop."
"No," said Ramsey. "I never was much of a--" He paused, fearing that he might be repeating himself, and too hastily amended his intention. "I never liked any girl enough to go and call on her."
"Ramsey Milholland!" she cried. "Why, when we were in school half the room used to be talking about how you and that pretty Milla--"
"No, no!" Ramsey protested, again too hurriedly. "I never called on her. We just went walking."
A moment later his colour suddenly became fiery. "I don't mean--I mean--" he stammered. "It was walking, of course--I mean we did go out walking but it wasn't walking like--like this." He concluded with a fit of coughing which seemed to rack him.
Dora threw back her head and laughed delightfully. "Don't you apologize!" she said. "~I~ didn't when I said it seemed to me that we've gone walking so often, when in reality it's only four or five times altogether. I think I can explain, though: I thhink it came partly from a feeling I have that I can rely on you--that you're a good, solid, reliable sort of person. I remember from the time we were little children, you always had a sort of worried, honest look in school; and you used to make a dent in your forehead--you meant it for a frown--whenever I caught your eye. You hated me so honestly, and you were so honestly afraid I wouldn't see it!"
"Oh, no--no--"
"Oh, yes--yes!" she laughed, then grew serious. "My feeling about you--that you were a person to be relied on, I mean--I think it began that evening in our freshman year, after the ~Lusitania~, when I stopped you on campus and you went with me, and I couldn't help crying, and you were so nice and quiet. I hardly realized then that it was the first time we'd ever really talked together--of course ~I~ did all the talking!--and yet we'd known each other so many years.
I thought of it afterward. But what gave me such a different view of you, I'd always thought you were one of that truculent sort of boys, always just bursting for a fight; but you showed me you'd really never had a fight in your life and hated fighting, and that you sympathized with my feeling about war." She stopped speaking to draw in her breath with a sharp sigh. "Ah, don't you remember what I've told you all along? How it keeps coming closer and closer--and now it's almost here! Isn't it ~unthinkable?~ And what can we do to stop it, we poor few who feel that we ~must~ stop it?"
"Well--" Ramsey began uncomfortably. "Of course I--I--"
"You can't do much," she said. "I know. None of us can. What can any little group do? There are so few of us among the undergraduates --and only one in the whole faculty. All the rest are for war. But we mustn't give up; we must never feel afterward that we left anything undone; we must fight to the last breath!"
"'Fight'?" he repeated wonderingly, then chuckled.
"Oh, as a figure of speech," she said, impatiently. "Our language is full of barbaric figures left over from the dark ages. But, oh, Ramsey!"--she touched his sleeve--"I've heard that Fred Mitchell is saying that he's going to Canada after Easter, to try to get into the Canadian aviation corps. If it's true, he's a dangerous firebrand, I think. Is it true?"
"I guess so. He's been talking that way some."
"But why do you ~let~ him talk that way?" she cried. "He's your roommate; surely you have more influence with him than anybody else has. Couldn't you--"
