It took a while for the news to get to her, and there were times in the months that followed when she wished it had never reached her at all. That she was in school in Washington state was due, she knew, to the Society. Of course Mouse’s mother had wanted her to “attend university”—as all fine young ladies did these days—but the original plan was for Mouse to go to a college close to home, ideally within half a day’s drive, so that her mother could keep an eye on her. With her mother’s help, Mouse applied to Oberlin, Antioch, Notre Dame, and Northwestern; at the same time, applications in Mouse’s name were sent to Oxford, Stanford, and the University of Washington…and those were just the schools Mouse later found out about. Stanford rejected her, and she was never really sure what happened with Oxford. But the University of Washington not only accepted her, it offered her a modest scholarship, which, by means of a Society-authored cover letter, got inflated into a major honor—the kind only awarded to the most exceptional candidates.
