"Kind of like one big family." I took out a pen and notepad.

"Yes." At the word family her mouth pursed. "You might say that." She shuffled some papers and began reciting:

"Jedson College was founded by Josiah T. Jedson, a Scottish immigrant who made his fortune in mining and railroads in 1858. That's three years before the University of Washington was founded, so we're really the old school in town. Jedson's intention was to endow an institution of higher learning where traditional values coexisted side by side with education in the basic arts and sciences. To this day, primary funding for the college comes from an annuity from the Jedson Foundation, although other sources of income are existent."

"I've heard tuition is rather high."

"Tuition," she frowned, "is twelve thousand dollars a year, plus housing, registration and miscellaneous fees."

I whistled.

"Do you give scholarships?"

"A small number of scholarships for deserving students are given each year, but there is no extensive program of financial aid."

"Then there's no interest in attracting students from a wide socio - economic range."

"Not particularly, no."

She took off her glasses, put her prepared material aside and stared at me myopically.

"I would hope we don't get into that particular line of questioning."

"Why is that, Margaret?"

She moved her lips, trying on several unspoken words for size, rejecting them all. Finally she said: "I thought this was going to be an impression piece. Something positive."

"It will be. I was simply curious." I had touched a nerve - not that it did me any good, for upsetting my source of information was the last thing I needed. But something about the upper - class smugness of the place was irritating me and bringing out the bad boy.

"I see." She put her glasses back on and picked up her papers, scanned them and pursed her lips. "Alex," she said, "can I speak to you off the record - one writer to another?"

"Sure." I closed the notepad and put the pen in my jacket pocket.

"I don't know how to put this." She played with one tweed lapel, twisting the coarse cloth then smoothing it. "This story, your visit - neither are particularly welcomed by the administration. As you may be able to tell from the grandeur of our surroundings, public relations is not avidly sought by Jedson College. After I spoke to you yesterday I told my superiors about your coming, thinking they'd be more than pleased. In fact, just the opposite was true. I wasn't exactly given a pat on the back."

She pouted, as if recalling a particularly painful spanking.

"I didn't intend to get you in trouble, Margaret."

"There was no way to know. As I told you, I'm new here. They do things differently. It's another way of life - quiet, conservative. There's a timeless quality to the place."

"How," I asked, "does a college attract enrollment without attracting attention?"

She chewed her lip.

"I really don't want to get into it."

"Margaret, it's off the record. Don't stonewall me."

"It's not important," she insisted, but her bosom heaved and conflict showed in the flat, magnified eyes. I played on that conflict.

"Then what's the fuss? We writers need to be open with one another. There are enough censors out there."

She thought about that for a long time. The tug of - war was evident on her face and I couldn't help but feel rotten.

"I don't want to leave here," she finally said. "I have a nice apartment with a view of the lake, my cats and my books. I don't want to lose - everything. I don't want to have to pack up and move back to the Midwest. To miles of flatland with no mountains, no way of establishing one's perspective. Do you understand."

Her manner and tone were brittle - I knew that manner, for I'd seen it in countless therapy patients, just before the defenses came tumbling down. She wanted to let go and I was going to help her, manipulative bastard that I was…

"Do you understand what I'm saying?" she was asking.

And I heard myself answer, so smooth, so sweet:

"Of course I do."

"Anything I tell you has to be confidential. Not for print."

"I promise. I'm a feature writer. I have no aspirations of becoming Woodward or Bernstein."

A faint smile appeared on the large, bland features.

"You don't? I did, once upon a time. After four years on the Madison student paper I thought I was going to turn journalism on its ear. I went for one solid year with no writing job - I did waitressing. I hated it. Then I worked for a dog magazine, writing cutesypoo press releases on poodles and schnauzers. They brought the little beasts into the office for photographs and they fouled the carpet. It stunk. When that folded I spent two years covering union meetings and polka parties in New Jersey and that finally squeezed all the illusion out of me. Now all I want is peace."

Again the glasses came off. She closed her eyes and massaged her temples.

"When you get down to it, that's what all of us want," I said.

She opened her eyes and squinted in my direction. From the way she strained I must have been a blur. I tried to look like a trustworthy blur.

She popped two pieces of cheese into her mouth and ground them to dust with lantern jaws.

"I don't know that any of it is relevant to your story," she said. "Especially if it's a puff piece you're after."

I forced a laugh.

"Now that you've got me interested, don't leave me dangling."

She smiled. "One writer to another?"

"One writer to another."

"Oh," she sighed, "I suppose it's no biggie."

"In the first place," she told me, between mouthfuls of cheese, "no, Jedson College is not interested in attracting outsiders, period. It's a college, but in name and formal status only. What Jedson College really is - functionally - is a holding pen. A place for the privileged class to stash their children for four years before the boys enter Daddy's business and the girls marry the boys and turn into Suzy Homemaker and join the Junior League. The boys major in business or economics, the girls in art history and home economics. The gentleman's C is the common goal. Being too smart is frowned upon. Some of the brighter ones do go on to law school or medical school. But when they finish their training they return to the fold."

She sounded bitter, a wallflower describing last year's prom.

"The average household income of the families that send their kids here is over a hundred thousand dollars a year. Think of that, Alex. Everyone is rich. Did you see the harbor?"

I nodded.

"Those floating toys belong to students." She paused, as if she still couldn't believe it. "The parking lot looks like the Monte Carlo Grand Prix. These kids wear cashmere and suede for horsing around."

One of her raw, coarse hands found the other and caressed it. She looked from wall to wall of the tiny room as if searching for hidden listening devices. I wondered what she was so nervous about. So Jedson was a school for rich kids. Stanford had started out that way too and might have ended up similarly stagnant if someone hadn't figured out that not letting in smart Jews and Asians and other people with funny names and high IQs would lead to eventual academic entropy.

"There's no crime in being rich," I said.

"It's not just that. It's the utter mindlessness that goes along with it. I was at Madison during the sixties. There was a sense of social awareness. Activism. We were working to end the war. Now it's the anti - nukes movement. The university can be a greenhouse for the conscience. Here, nothing grows."

I envisioned her fifteen years back, dressed in khakis and sweatshirt, marching and mouthing slogans. Radicalism had fought a losing battle with survival, eroded by too much of nothing. But she could still take an occasional hit of nostalgia… "It's especially hard on the faculty," she was saying. "Not the Old Guard. The Young Turks - they actually call themselves that. They come here because of the job crunch, with their typical academic idealism and liberal views and last two, maybe three years. It's intellectually stultifying - not to mention the frustration of earning fifteen thousand dollars a year when the students' wardrobes cost more than that."