Many evenings spent
with her grandfather at the observatory had not been wasted. She knew
the paths of the stars as she knew the walks of the campus. Dr.
Wandless, the president emeritus, addressed her always as "My Lady of
the Constellations," and told her solemnly that from much peering
through the telescope she had coaxed the stars into her own eyes.
Professor Kelton and his granddaughter were thus fully identified with
the college and its business, which was to impart knowledge,--an
old-fashioned but not yet wholly neglected function at Madison. She
reckoned time by semesters; the campus had always been her playground;
and the excitements of her life were those of a small and sober academic
community. The darkest tragedies she had known had, indeed, been related
to the life of the college,--the disciplining of the class of '01 for
publishing itself in numerals on the face of the court-house clock; the
recurring conflicts between town and gown that shook the community
every Washington's birthday; the predatory habits of the Greek
professor's cow, that botanized freely in alien gardens and occasionally
immured herself in Professor Kelton's lettuce frames; these and like
heroic matters had marked the high latitudes of Sylvia's life. In the
long vacations, when most of the faculty sought the Northern lakes, the
Keltons remained at home; and Sylvia knew all the trees of the campus,
and could tell you just what books she had read under particular maples
or elms.
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