Sylvia knew the world chiefly from her reading,--Miss Alcott's and Mrs.Whitney's stories at first, and "St.
Nicholas" every month, on a certain day that found her meeting the postman far across the campus; and she had read all the "Frank" books,--the prized possessions of a neighbor's boy,--from the Maine woods through the gunboat and prairie exploits of that delectable hero.
At fourteen she had fallen upon Scott and Bulwer and had devoured them voraciously during the long vacation, in shady corners of the deserted campus; and she was now fixing Dickens's characters ineffaceably in her mind by Cruikshank's drawings.

She was well grounded in Latin and had a fair reading knowledge of French and German.

It was true of Sylvia, then and later, that poetry did not greatly interest her, and this had been attributed to her undoubted genius for mathematics.

She was old for her age, people said, and the Lane wondered what her grandfather meant to do with her.
The finding of Professor Kelton proves to be, as Sylvia had surmised, a simple matter.

He is at work in a quiet alcove of the college library, a man just entering sixty, with white, close-trimmed hair and beard.