She knew the paths of the stars as she knew the walks of the campus.

Dr.
Wandless, the president emeritus, addressed her always as "My Lady of the Constellations," and told her solemnly that from much peering through the telescope she had coaxed the stars into her own eyes.
Professor Kelton and his granddaughter were thus fully identified with the college and its business, which was to impart knowledge,--an old-fashioned but not yet wholly neglected function at Madison.

She reckoned time by semesters; the campus had always been her playground; and the excitements of her life were those of a small and sober academic community.

The darkest tragedies she had known had, indeed, been related to the life of the college,--the disciplining of the class of '01 for publishing itself in numerals on the face of the court-house clock; the recurring conflicts between town and gown that shook the community every Washington's birthday; the predatory habits of the Greek professor's cow, that botanized freely in alien gardens and occasionally immured herself in Professor Kelton's lettuce frames; these and like heroic matters had marked the high latitudes of Sylvia's life.

In the long vacations, when most of the faculty sought the Northern lakes, the Keltons remained at home; and Sylvia knew all the trees of the campus, and could tell you just what books she had read under particular maples or elms.
Andrew Kelton was a mathematical scholar of high attainments.