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seemed so. Janet rubbed her eyes briskly, and went to meet Christina and Peg for lunch.
    Peg had a perverse fondness for eating in the dining hall that cowered under the mass of Taylor Hall. Since she also possessed a much stronger will than you would expect from her size or the meek way she blinked at you from behind her glasses, Janet had already spent a great deal more time than she liked in the dim vastness of Taylor.

    It was especially bad today; three of the fluorescent fixtures were flickering and two were out. The light seeping in through the high, barred basement windows looked left over from the previous century, like Fourth Ericson's ghost. The dark wooden tables, round and square and rectangular, that made Eliot Hall charming to eat in, sank into the gloom here as if they had something to hide. The red or green coverings of the chair seats looked like gray that had been bled on or brown that had grown mold over itself. The smell of vegetable soup seemed to be last week's, and the general air last year's.
    Janet got herself a bowl of soup, a grilled-cheese sandwich, and a couple of apples to smuggle out again, and went looking for Peg and Christina.
    They were at a square table that had been set too close to the line of people waiting for lunch, but Janet knew already that budging either of them was almost impossible. She sat down with her back to the steam tables and hoped nobody would trip over her.
    "How was your advisor?" she said to Christina, who had expressed enormous apprehension at the discovery that her advisor was a member of the Religion Department, as if he might require her to eschew learning evolution.
    "He was just fine," said Christina. "He tried to get me to take some Latin, but that was all. I might take some next year."
    "Who is he?" said Peg.
    "Fields," said Christina.
    "Oh, you should have asked me about him; he's great. I'm taking New Testament Greek from him this term. He has a wonderful sense of humor. Sharon said you had some nut in the Religion Department, and I thought it must be Olsen."
    "Why'd he want you to take Latin?" said Janet.
    "Oh, you know, because of medical terminology and biological jargon and all that; he said it made them easier to figure out."
    "My advisor tried to get me to take Greek," said Janet.
    "Who's your advisor?" said Peg.
    "Melinda Wolfe."
    "Well, she's in the Classics Department; what d'you expect?"
    "Fields didn't try to get Tina to take any Religion courses, did he?"
    "No; but Classics is full of demon recruiters. Wolfe is okay, though. She lives in Ericson Apartment, and gives a big party each spring."
    "You've got to get a look at her, Tina," said Janet. She was halfway into her description of Melinda Wolfe, and was actually holding all Christina's attention, when Molly arrived with a tray that contained nine little china bowls of tapioca pudding.
    "Bleah!" said Peg, edging away from her.
    "I'm having my period; I can't eat anything else. Talk about something distracting."
    "I'm telling Tina about Melinda Wolfe," said Janet. Molly looked dubiously at her tapioca, which Janet decided was a license to continue. "She made me think gray was the only color for redheads."
    "It depends on your complexion," said Christina. She was wearing gray herself, it made her eyes look very blue, which was most unfair. "You could get one of the Blackstock T-shirts in gray, and see how it looked. It might wash your eyes out; I'm not sure." She had been picking all the pineapple out of her fruit cup as Janet spoke; now she speared a bleached and wrinkled grape with her fork and scowle d at it. "Oh!" she said. "I thought that name was familiar. Some of the kids on the Bio Tour were talking about Wolfe. They said she's a—"
    Molly's head came up like a dog's that hears unfamiliar footsteps. Peg said, "A lesbian? They say that about everybody who lives in Ericson."
    "And what do they say about the guys who live in Dunbar?" said Molly.
    Peg grinned at her. "They say they're all