CHAPTER XLV.
A Party At Home.
It has not been mentioned that our heroine had matriculated at Ousebridge, and become an undergraduate of New College, the first college erected after the original one, which was called Foundation College. She enjoyed the life thoroughly, and was the leading spirit of the place in all things that savoured of its principal purpose, the eradication of the old ideas and standards of feminine vocation. Undoubtedly, before the days of Ousebridge, Girton and Newnham and other institutions had been praiseworthy moves in the right direction, but the authorities in those places had been content with the improvement in studies, and had been willing to compromise with the old regimen in other matters; whereas at Ousebridge the object was to obliterate every artificial distinction between the sexes which had been in the past, or might be in the future, used to the detriment of the female sex. And it was in aiding such a purpose that our heroine’s strength lay. She was no abnormal genius; she was simply a healthily developed girl, strong physically, mentally, and spiritually; a pattern for girls in general, so soon as society shall have been led—or driven—to do women justice.
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It was the Easter vacation, and the only pleasant sunny
