A White Bird Flying by Bess Streeter Aldrich

In the game of roommates--in which game the freshmen are the pawns-- Laura was given into the care of a sophomore--one Bernice Fowler-- a brisk capable girl with so many of the characteristics of Laura's own efficient mother that one might have wondered if the two girls had not been interchanged at birth. Laura had not lived with her a full day until she had altered the position of all the furniture in the room, rearranged Laura's hair, ripped a lace collar off one of Laura's dresses and instructed her to wear brown beads with it instead, discussed a change of music teachers for her, and run over a list of male acquaintances to pick out a boy friend for her. By evening Laura also had received her first lesson in fraternal rivalry. Standing at the window of their room on third, she asked guilelessly: "Why are there so many cars all around the Gamma Zeta house?" To which Bernice Fowler said significantly: "It's probably because there's a stop button there. There are NEVER more cars around the Gamma house than around ours. Remember that."

At the end of one month, Laura's newly acquired knowledge consisted of a few French words, the fact that she did not stand correctly in Phys. Ed., that there is much more to the science of botany than pressing flowers collected along old Stove Creek, that all men are not born free and equal, that all Alpha Betas are God's own children, that Pi Tau men rate much higher than Tau Phis, that Omega Gammas are the lowest species in the genus Greek, and that a barb is a microscopic organism of the animal kingdom. To be sure, some of this instruction did not assimilate easily. And when food or instruction do not digest readily, they cause distress if they can not be thrown off. Laura was sensitive, deeply responsive to the feelings of all humans with whom she came in contact; and this being so, she could neither wholly believe nor totally disregard. So she suffered a little in characteristic silence.