'i'm going to barnard, i think,' she said

Sadly, my dread of last week was well-founded. But before that sadness there was this lovely scene which, I must admit, made my heart sing the littlest bit:

Steenie left us, and I walked Marcia home. It was pleasant to walk with the snow melted, and we held hands and scuffed our shoes on the clay sidewalks, doing a lot of pointed inhaling to sniff the first scents of spring, which were largely imaginary.

"I'm going to Barnard, I think," she said as we reached the rectory. "My mother went there. I'm scared to death. I'm so stupid, and it'll break my poor father."

"You'll do fine," I said. "You've already got a head start on the New York girls in categories like blunt talk and dirty words."

"Are you really going to Harvard? I don't think anybody from De Crispin has ever gone to Harvard."

"That's always been a pitiful little dream of my mother's," I said. "It's more likely that I'll go to the University of Alabama. It's more my speed. They have forty fraternity houses and one classroom, where they teach the History of the Confederacy. They have a good record, though. They haven't been guilty of education since eighteen thirty-one."

"Well, where do you want to go? Don't you care?"

"Barnard's part of Columbia, isn't it?"

"That's right."

"I want to go to Columbia."

(Red Sky At Morning, Richard Bradford)