on familiar ground, though she had never seen this street before; here she was re-entering the company of lively, above-average men and girls who would hold certain difficult expectations of her, but of whom she could expect more than of others. She knew the name of not one girl or man here but she felt that she knew them; certainly she knew how they would act in regard to her, if she acted as she had before. She did not mean to do that.
She passed a house with a transom above the front door displaying the triangle and capital A of the Delta Alpha fraternity; and the cab slowed. The second door beyond, which by information was Mrs. Fansler's, was a large frame house painted some dull color which made the lower part appear somber in the failing daylight; but the upper windows, like so many upper windows on this street, were glowing bright.
Fidelia stepped out and paid her driver; she picked up her suitcase and went up the snowy steps to a dark porch where she felt for the bell. While she pressed it, she whispered a chant:
"Fend a friend and kiss a foe,
The first can strike the fouler blow;
Never look the road you go;
Travel on it; you will know."
She was giving no thought to the meaning of the words; she never really thought about them except as composing a sort of charm for good luck which she had picked up from a fortune teller years ago when she was a child in school at Des Moines. She had been told to repeat it whenever making a change and
