After their first encounter with Willa Cather, the students laughed because………. .

On her first day at the University of Nebraska, Willa Cather was mistaken for a professor. She was only 16, fresh from a small prairie town. Yet, the students were impressed when she peeked around a classroom door and asked, "Is this elementary Greek?" They had been expecting someone like this, with a deep, commanding voice, a solemn face topped with short hair, and a straw hat. So they nodded politely, then burst into laughter when the stranger entered - and proved to be a young girl. Of course, they could not know that she would grow up to be a major American writer.