Chapter II: Part 2

Berrisford has been very nice ever since that Monday night. At first I think it was a desire to "make amends" that caused him to spend so much time in my room and ask me to do so many things with him and his friends; but of course he never put it that way. He was very much worried when I told him that my adviser and the Regent had tried to find out who had given me the helmet, and he wanted to rush and confess. It took me a good while to persuade him not to. In fact, I did n't persuade him exactly, but only got him to agree at length to let Mr. Duggie decide. Mr. Duggie thought the matter over for a moment, and said that as my refusal to tell hadn't, so far as he could see, made me a martyr on the altar of friendship, he thought it would be unnecessarily theatrical for Berrisford to give himself up.

One day Berrisford asked me where I ate, and when I told him I had been trying the places in and about the Square, he said: "Why, you silly thing--why don't you join my crowd at Mrs. Brown's?" He spoke as if the idea had just occurred to him, but that same morning when he introduced me to a man who came up to his room, the fellow said: "I hear you 're coming to our table. That's good." So it must have all been arranged beforehand. Berrisford 's awfully generous and impulsive and kind, only he's so scatter-brained and eccentric you never know what he 's going to do next.

I 've done no end of interesting things since I last wrote in my diary. I bought a song called "Love's Sorrow" at a music store, had the man play it for me five or six times, learned the words and then attempted to sing it at the trial of Glee Club candidates. I 'm sure I sang all the notes and I remembered the words without a mistake; but something was wrong. For after I stopped singing the fellow at the piano went on playing the accompaniment several minutes. And when I took my seat I heard one of the judges murmur as he wrote something on a slip of paper: "Fourth heat; Tommy Trusting shows heels to the bunch and wins in a canter." They told me I would see my name in the "Crimson" when they wanted me for rehearsal. It hasn't appeared yet and that was some time ago.

Then one morning I borrowed a jersey and some moleskins from a fellow at our table and went over to Soldiers' Field to try for the football team. First we lined up for short sprints of twenty yards or so; then they divided us into squads and made us practise falling on the ball (I found chloroform liniment very good for this; but Berrisford maintains that there's nothing like osteopathy). Afterward we practised place kicks, drop kicks and punts; candidates for tackle were lined up against one another and tried breaking through; quarter-backs and centre-rushes practised passing and snapping back the ball. I tried everything--even the dummy.

The dummy is an imitation man in football clothes, suspended by pulley from a wire stretched between posts twenty-five or thirty feet apart. It is weighted by sand in a bag that is supposed to slide up toward the pulley as you tackle the thing and grind its nose in the dirt; only it does n't. What actually happens is that some one pulls the dummy rapidly from one post to the other, and while the creature is spinning through the air you hurl yourself at it, cling to it desperately with your finger-nails and teeth for about the tenth of a second, and are then flicked off--like a drop of water from a grindstone--into the next lot. When you return, the coach says he thinks "that will do for this morning" and enrolls your name in "Squad H." The members of this squad--it's the largest--are told to report for practice when they see their names in the "Crimson." All the others have been out every day or so; but although I've read the "Crimson" carefully every morning I haven't seen Squad H notified once.

I 've got so that I don't have to look at the printed schedule any more to see the days and hours of my various lectures. I just go to the right one when the bell rings as if I had been doing it all my life. In fact the college world has settled down to a routine of lectures and recitations, pleasantly broken by football games on Wednesdays and Saturdays, dining in town now and then, and the theatre afterward. Come to think of it, I 've been to the theatre rather oftener than "now and then." At home there are only two; and the things we have there--except once in a long time--are pretty fierce. But here there are about seven or eight big ones, and all sorts of continuous performance places, dime museums and "nickelodeons" besides. You simply have to go pretty often or you miss something good that everybody 's talking about. Berrisford goes every night.

I know now what Mr. Duggie meant when he said my allowance would not be big enough. He said it was generous; there, however, I disagree with him. I 'm not in the _least_ extravagant, but papa does n't seem to appreciate how many unexpected things happen that cost money. There was my new overcoat, for instance. Berrisford was having one made, and I realized when I saw him trying it on at the tailor's (it's a great, soft, loose thing; the kind all the fellows are wearing now) that my old one wouldn't do at all. In fact I had n't cared to put mine on, although the wind has been pretty sharp once or twice on the way home from town late at night. The tailor said that now was the time to get a coat like Berrisford's, as it would be much more expensive later in the season; so I ordered one. In a certain way it was real economy to do so. Then, I 've gone to town in the afternoon several times with some of the fellows who are at our table and stayed at the last moment to dinner and the theatre. I did n't have enough money with me to do all this and was n't going to at first; but I found that the others did n't, either, and expected to charge their dinners at the hotel. You can even charge theatre tickets if you get them from an agent and pay fifty cents more. It's very convenient. I bought a few pictures for my study--it looked so bare (Berrisford has all sorts of queer, interesting prints and embroideries on his walls that he brought back from abroad); and I simply had to get some more chairs. For I had only one (the whirligig in front of the desk doesn't count; it's too uncomfortable), which made it embarrassing when four or five men dropped in. Then I had a dozen shirts made at a place just off Tremont Street. The shirts mamma got me at home are very nice and all that; but they're not the kind the fellows are wearing here. Everybody has colored ones--pale pinks and blues, or white with a little stripe of something running through them. Mine were all white. I really did n't need more than six new ones, I suppose, but the man said they were cheaper by the dozen. He showed me some really beautiful neckties that had arrived that day from London. Against the materials I had picked out for the shirts they were stunning, and as they weren't dear--considering the duty, the originality of the designs and the heavy silks they were made of--I let him send me five of them. There were the prettiest old pair of brass andirons and a fender in the window of an "antique" shop on Beacon Street that I used to stop and covet whenever I went into town. They were just the things for my fireplace, which looked rather shabby--although comfortable. I didn't think I could afford them at first; but one day when I happened to be passing everything in the window was for sale at a discount of ten per cent. The man was very kind and obliging and let me charge them.

They let you do that at all the shops, it seems; but I do think they might have a little more decency about sending in their bills. The first of November is three days off--and yet I 've heard from every cent I 've spent. I don't quite know what to do about it, as my allowance--even when it comes--won't be nearly enough to pay for everything; and of course I 'll have to keep some of it for my board and washing and schoolbooks, and all the other little expenses one can't very well steer clear of. Before going to bed the last two nights I 've spent an hour or more in itemizing everything and adding it all up, and then checking off the people who have to be paid immediately, the ones who could wait a short time, and the ones about whom there is no particular hurry. This makes the financial outlook a little more possible, but not much. And yet Duggie had the _nerve_ to say he thought my allowance _generous_!

Another matter that I try not to think of is the fact that very soon we are to be given what is called "hour examinations" in all our studies. I never imagined they would come so--well, abruptly; when we began it seemed as if we would take much longer to learn enough to be examined in. To tell the truth--with the exception of my English course--I haven't become deeply interested as yet in the lectures. After the first few times I gave up trying to take notes; everything I wrote seemed so unimportant. And I haven't done any of the reading, either. They expect you to do a lot of reading at home or in the library, and hold you responsible for it in the examination. The man Berrisford and I have in history is a dreamy old thing who goes into thoughtful trances every now and then in the middle of a sentence, while three hundred and fifty stylographic pens hang in mid-air waiting to harpoon the next word. One day, after telling us to read a certain work on the feudal system, he added in a kind of vague, helpless way,--

"We haven't the book in the library and I believe it is out of print, so I don't think you will be able to buy it anywhere; but it's a singularly perfect exposition of the subject and I strongly advise you all to read it." They say he knows more about fen-drainage in the thirteenth century than any other living person except one dreadfully old man in Germany who 's beginning to forget about it.

We were instructed to make ourselves familiar with another work that is in the library, and told that without a knowledge of it we could not expect to accomplish much in the examination.

"I don't suppose many of you will read every word of it," the old man said, "although it will do you a vast amount of good if you do." I privately made up my mind to plough through the whole thing--even if it were in two volumes; I thought it would please him. So, the other day as it was raining and there was n't anything in particular going on, Berrisford suggested that we run over to the library and glance through the book. We'd never been in the library before and had to ask one of the pages at the delivery desk where the history alcove was. He couldn't attend to us at first, as there was an angry old gentleman with a very red face prancing up and down in front of the desk exclaiming: "It's an outrage--an outrage! I shall certainly speak to the President about this before the sun goes down upon my wrath!" Several other pages were cowering behind the desk, and a terrified librarian was murmuring: "I can have it here the first thing in the morning, sir--the first thing; can you wait that long?"

"But I want it _now_!" the old gentleman declared; "I shall _not_ wait until the first thing in the morning. You 're preposterous. It's an outrage!" He was so emphatic and peevish that some of the students in the big reading-room pushed open the swinging doors and stuck their heads in to see what the trouble was.

Well, Berrisford and I found out from the page that he is the greatest philosopher of modern times. He had come in to get a book that hadn't been asked for in fourteen years, and had just learned that it had been carted away to the crypt of Appleton Chapel to make room for something that seemed to be rather more universal in its appeal.

The page took us to the alcove we were looking for, and Berrisford found our book almost immediately. My back was toward him when he discovered it, and I turned around only because of his unusual and prolonged silence. He was standing petrified in front of eighteen fat, dog-eared volumes, with his big eyes blinking like an owl confronted by a dazzling light.

"Is that it?" I inquired after a moment in a cold, hushed voice. By way of answer he merely rolled his eyes and swallowed as if his throat were dry.

"It's a masterly little thing--isn't it?" he at length managed to say. Then without further comment we removed the volumes from the shelf and piled them on a table in the alcove. They almost covered it. When we had finished, Berrisford, with a grim look about his under lip, opened one of them and began to read. I did the same. It was just three o'clock. We read for an hour without speaking or looking at each other, and at the end of that time Berrisford took a pencil from his pocket and began to make calculations on the back of a letter. At last he looked up as if to demand my attention.

"I have read this book conscientiously--footnotes and everything--for an hour," he said; he was deliberate and there was an air of finality in his tone. "I find that I have completed five pages--the meaning of which has since escaped me. Now, as there are four hundred pages in this volume and as many, presumably, in every one of the other seventeen, it will take me one thousand four hundred and forty hours--sixty days, or two months--to 'familiarize' myself with the whole set. If we sit here night and day for the next two months without taking a second off to eat, sleep, or bathe, we shall have glanced through this superficial pamphlet and pleased the old man."

"I think it has stopped raining," I replied.

We have a new inmate at our house. I woke up one morning hearing such a strange, wild, sad little song coming from my study. At first I thought I must have dreamed it, but even after I sat up in bed and knew I was awake, the sound continued. It was the queerest, most barbaric little refrain, all in a minor key with words I could n't make out, and was the sort of thing one could imagine a "native" of some kind crooning to himself in the middle of a rice-field. I listened to it awhile--almost afraid to go in; but when it began to grow louder, and then was interrupted from time to time by the most horrible gurgling and strangling noises, I jumped up and opened my study door. At the same moment Berrisford and Mrs. Chester appeared at the other door. In the middle of the room was a bristling brown thing with pointed ears and muzzle and shrewd little eyes. It had absurdly big feet and looked like a baby wolf. Something that seemed to be a piece of leather was dangling from its mouth. Berrisford threw himself on the floor, exclaiming: "My darling--my Saga--what is it--speak to me!" and pulled gently at the piece of leather. The brute rolled his eyes, gagged a little, and let him have it. "Why, it's the thumb of a glove," Berrisford said, holding up his prize for us to look at, "and he dess tould n't eat it 'tause it had a nassy tin button wivetted on uzzer end, so he tould n't," he added to the animal.

"That doesn't seem to have stood in the way of his eating the other one," I remarked coldly, for there was enough of the chewed thing in Berrisford's hand to enable me to identify the remains of a pair of very expensive gloves I had bought two days before.

"Heavens!--do you suppose he really did?" Berrisford asked in great alarm. "Do you think it will hurt him?"

"Of course he ate it. I don't see it anywhere, and they were both together on that chair. I hope it _will_ hurt him," I said.

"It is n't like you, Wood, to talk that way about a poor, lonely, foreign thing who 's never been in a house before in all his life," Berrisford muttered resentfully.

"Well, he certainly do make the most outlandish sounds," Mrs. Chester interposed.

"It isn't outlandish--it's Icelandic," Berrisford replied. "He came all the way from Reikiavik on a Gloucester fishing-smack. I bought him at Gloucester yesterday for a dollar--didn't I, my booful Saga; ess he did. And he dess chewed all de checks often de trunks in dat nassy old baggage car on de way up--didn't he, darlin'? And dat horrid baggage man was dess crazy 'tause he did n't know where to put off any baggage and had to delay de twain like evvysing." Berrisford became quite incoherent after this, so I returned to my bedroom and slammed the door.

I don't think it's right for any one man to inflict a whole community with a beast like Saga, and I 've told Berrisford so several times; but he always says: "You seem to forget that I suffer as much, if not more, than any one. Do you ever hear _me_ complain when he wallows in the mud and then snuggles up in _my_ bed? Was there any outcry when he ate _my_ gloves and _my_ patent leather shoes and _my_ Russia leather notebook with hundreds of exhaustive, priceless notes on the first part of 'Paradise Lost'? Did I make a violent scene--the way you and Duggie do every day--when I gave the tea for my sister and found him just before the people came--behind the bathtub in a state of coma from having eaten thirty-six perfectly _delicious_ lettuce sandwiches? You might at least admit that you think he 's just as distinguished and quaint-looking as he can be; because, of course, you do think so. You know you love him to follow you through the Square--with everybody turning to look--you know you do. Does n't he, _mon tou-tou, mon bebe, mon chien de race_?"

One of the fellows at the table invited us to dine at his house in town last Sunday evening. Berrisford was to meet me at a hotel in the Back Bay at a quarter past seven and we were to go together. I took a long walk that afternoon, and the air was so delicious and the autumn foliage in the country so beautiful that I didn't realize how late it was until I looked at a clock in a jeweller's window on the way back. I hurried to my room to dress, and as I opened the front door my heart suddenly sank--for upstairs I heard Saga chanting his terrible little refrain. We have all come to dread that sound at our house, for it invariably means the loss of a cherished object to somebody. Berrisford calls it the "Icelandic Hunger and Death Motif." I ran upstairs and found Saga eating one of the tails of my dress-coat which I had hung over the back of a chair in my study to get the creases out. He had apparently first torn it off, then divided it into small pieces, and was consuming them one by one as I came in. I was already late for dinner, and as it was Sunday evening there was no one in town from whom I could borrow another coat. For a moment I could n't decide whether to sit down and cry or to commit Sagacide.

*IV*

Of course I went to the dinner--and what is more, I arrived almost on time. I can't give myself any particular credit for this achievement, however, as it was luck, pure and simple, that got me there. There is no doubt about it, I am marvellously lucky; I seem to have a knack of falling on my feet, and although Duggie has taken to worrying about my "shiftlessness" (as he is pleased to call it) in money matters, and the calmness with which I regard the approaching examinations and the academic side of college in general, I have a feeling that everything will come out all right somehow.

It would sound heartless, I suppose, to speak as if I thought it fortunate that Jerry Brooks had been stricken with appendicitis just in time to get me into the dinner, if it were n't for the fact that he is recovering so splendidly. (I went up to the hospital this afternoon to inquire.) But under the circumstances it is hard not to look upon his sudden seizure rather cheerfully--as I know he will enjoy hearing about it when he is well enough to see people. I was in despair that evening when his roommate came clattering up our tin steps and pounded on Berrisford's door; but the instant I ran into the hall and saw him my heart gave a great throb of hope. He had his dress clothes on; but he didn't look in the least like a person on the way to dine in town--and I felt with indescribable relief that, if this were the case, I could have his coat.

"Isn't Berrisford here? Has he gone?" he exclaimed excitedly. (I had never seen him before--although I knew his chum, Brooks, slightly.) "We were going to dine at the same house in town, but my roommate, Jerry Brooks, got sick just as I was starting and I can't go, and two doctors have taken him up to the hospital, and the Hemingtons haven't a telephone, and I thought I'd let Berrisford know, for, of course----"

Well, his coat didn't fit me in a way to make a tailor expire with envy exactly, but I was mighty glad to get it--and anyhow, I think people are inclined to take a dress-suit for granted. Berrisford attached no importance whatever to the fact that his beast had ruined my coat, but merely said reproachfully: "I hope you let him have the pieces to play with; he 'll be so lonely this evening with no one in the house except Mrs. Chester."

I have mentioned the fact that of late Duggie has given intimations of having me "on his mind." Of course when a man like Duggie finds time to care one way or the other about what he thinks you ought to do, it's a great honor. He is the busiest, hardest worked, and most influential person I ever knew. He belongs to no end of clubs, and besides being captain of the team he's at the head of a lot of other college things. Almost every day there's a reporter or two lying in wait for him out here to ask about the team, and whether he approves of the athletic committee's latest mandate, and what he thinks about all sorts of things in regard to which he hasn't any opinion whatever--and would n't express it even if he had. Besides all this he manages in some way to study awfully hard and to get high marks in everything he takes. Furthermore, he's in training most of the year, and just now he has to go to bed every night except Saturday at half-past nine or ten. He's almost always amiable and kind to people, and I think he's great. I can't help liking the fact that he drops into my room and sits down and talks the way he does. Some of the fellows at our table found him there the other day and were scared to death. But at the same time I have a feeling that he does n't think Berrisford and I are just what we ought to be. As if people could be different from the way they 're made! I know that sometimes he would like to say things that, after all, he never quite does.

Of Berrisford, I 'm sure, he doesn't approve at all. I don't, of course, believe for a moment that he was anything but amused at the way Berrisford conjugated the French verb for him the other day; but as it is the sort of thing that Berri takes an uncontrollable joy in doing, I think Duggie has an idea that he is n't good for anything else.

Duggie--I can't imagine why--has never studied French until this year. He enrolled in a class only a week or so ago, and though it's merely an extra course with him and he could get his degree just as easily without it, he goes at it as if it were all-important. Berrisford knows French as well as he knows English, and volunteered to help him with his exercises. The other afternoon Duggie ran into Berri's room and said: "I 've an idea that we're going to have '_je suis bon_' in French to-day; I wish you would write out a few tenses for me so I can learn them on the way over--I simply have n't had a minute to myself for two days." Naturally Berrisford seemed delighted to help him, and gravely wrote something on a piece of paper that Duggie carried off just as the bell was ringing. When he got into the Yard and slowed up to look at it, this is what he found:

_Je suis bon_
_Tu es bones_
_Il est beans_
_Nous sommes bonbons_
_Vous etes bonbonnieres_
_Ils sont bon-ton._

Of course he did n't actually care; but I don't think the incident helped in Duggie's opinion to throw any very dazzling light on Berrisford's really serious qualities. Duggie regarded it, I 'm sure, as about on a par with the way we get out of sitting through our history lecture.

One day when the dreamy old gentleman who conducts the history course was trying to prove that Charlemagne either was or was n't surprised (I 've forgotten which) when the Pope suddenly produced a crown and stuck it on his head, a ripple of mirth swept gently across the room, very much as a light breeze ruffles the surface of a wheatfield. No one laughed out loud; but when between three and four hundred men all smile at once, it makes a curious little disturbance I can't quite describe. The old gentleman looked up from his notes, took off his spectacles, chose one of the other pairs lying on the desk in front of him (he has three or four kinds that he uses for different distances), and inspected the room. But by the time he had got himself properly focused there was nothing to see; the fellow who had made every one giggle by climbing out of the window and down the fire-escape was probably a block away. So, after a troubled, inquiring look from side to side, the dear old man changed his spectacles again and went on with the lecture.

Now, although it had never occurred to any one to crawl down the fire-escape until that day, every one in our part of the room has become infatuated with the idea, and three times a week--shortly after half-past two--there is a continuous stream of men backing out the window, down the iron ladder and into the Yard. In fact, the struggle to escape became so universal and there were so many scraps at the window and in mid-air on the way down over who should go first, that Berrisford evolved the idea of distributing numbers the way they do in barbershops on Saturday afternoon when everybody in the world becomes inspired with the desire to be shaved at the same time. It works beautifully; but of late the undertaking is attended by considerable risk.

At first Professor Kinde stopped lecturing and fumbled for his other spectacles only when he heard the class titter; I don't believe he in the least knew what was going on. But recently he has become extremely foxy. Although he has n't spoken of the matter, he realizes what is happening, and I think the ambition of his declining years is to catch somebody in the act of darting toward the window. At irregular intervals now, throughout his lectures, he--apropos of nothing--drops his notes, seizes a fresh pair of spectacles, makes a lightning change, and then peeks craftily about the room while the class tries hard not to hurt his feelings by laughing. Then, disappointed, but with an air of "I 'll-surely-strike-it-right-next-time," he changes back again and continues. The lectures have become so exciting and fragmentary that Berrisford and I are torn with the conflicting desires to stay and see what happens and to get out into the wonderful autumn weather. Usually, however, we leave, and the last time, just as I was preparing to drop to the ground, Duggie strode in sight. Berrisford, half-way down, happened to glance over his shoulder. When he saw Duggie he swung around, struck an Alexandre Dumas attitude, and exclaimed dramatically,--

"Sire, we have liberated the prisoners, cut away the portcullis and fired the powder magazine. Is 't well?" Duggie laughed.

"Powder magazines aren't the only things that get fired around these parts, monsieur," he answered as he passed on.

Now, there was nothing disagreeable either in the remark or the way Duggie made it; he seemed perfectly good-natured, and, although in a great hurry, very much amused. But, somehow, it was n't quite as if any one else had said it. I don't know what "reading between the lines" is called when there aren't any lines to read between; but anyhow that's what I couldn't help doing. Duggie's little thrust was made at Berri--but it was intended for me. And that 's what I mean when I say Duggie has me on his mind. He would have Berri there, too, if he liked him; but he does n't. I think he firmly believes that he regards us both with the utmost impartiality; yet I know (this is recorded in all modesty, merely as a fact) that he likes me, and that for poor Berri he has no use at all. Berrisford is tactless; he had no business, for instance, to tell Duggie about the watch.

One Saturday morning when Berrisford had finished his lectures for the day, and I found that a cut was to be given in my last one, we strolled along Massachusetts Avenue, without really meaning to go anywhere, until we came to the bridge across the Back Bay. We leaned over the rail awhile and watched the tide clutching viciously at the piers as it swirled out, and then, farther up, I noticed a flock of ducks paddling about in a most delightful little mud-hole left by the falling tide.

"I could hit one of those birdies if I had a shotgun," I said, closing one eye. (It just shows what a trivial remark may sometimes lead one into.)

"It wouldn't do you any good," Berrisford yawned; "you couldn't get it."

"I don't see why not. I could borrow a boat from the Humane Society and row out," I answered, rather irritated by Berrisford's languid scepticism.

"Well, what on earth would you do with the poor little beast after you did get him?" he pursued.

"What do you suppose?" I exclaimed. "What do people usually do when they shoot a duck?"

"I think they usually say that they really hit two, but that the other one managed to crawl into a dense patch of wild rice growing near by," Berrisford answered.

"I should have it cooked and then I 'd eat it," I said, ignoring his remark.

"What an extremely piggish performance! There would not be enough for any one but yourself. I would much rather go into town with somebody and have one apiece at the Touraine."

"Oh, Berrisford," I murmured; "this is so sudden!"

When we reached the other side of the bridge we got on a passing car, and after we sat down Berrisford said, "You 'll have to pay for me; I have n't any money either here or in Cambridge." As I had just eight cents in the world and had taken it for granted that Berri was going to pay for me, we jumped out before the conductor came around, and resumed our walk.

"If you have n't any money and I haven't any money, I 'm inclined to think the ducks will not fly well to-day," I mused; for the last time we had been to the Touraine the head waiter--a most tiresome person--told me we could n't charge anything more there until we paid our bills.

"I suppose you would just sit on the curbstone and starve," Berrisford sniffed. And as we walked along I saw that he had some kind of a plan. He took me through one of the queer little alleys with which Boston is honeycombed and out into a noisy, narrow, foreign-looking street, lined with shabby second-hand stores and snuffy restaurants,--the kind that have red tablecloths. At first I thought it was Berri's intention to get luncheon in one of these places, although I did n't see how even he could manage it very well on eight cents. However, I asked no questions. Suddenly he stopped and took off his sleeve-links. Then we walked on a few steps and went into a pawnbroker's.

It sounds absurd, but when I discovered what Berrisford was about to do I felt curiously excited and embarrassed. Of course I knew that lots of people pawn things, but I had never seen it done before, and like most of the things you can think about and read about in cold blood, I found that it made my heart beat a good deal faster actually to do it. In fact, I did n't care to do it at all, and told Berrisford so in an undertone; but he said,--

"Why not? There 's nothing wrong in it. You own something more or less valuable and you happen for the moment to need something else; why should n't you exchange them? If the soiled vampire who runs this place (what's become of him, anyhow?) would give me two small roasted ducks and some bread and butter and currant jelly and two little cups of coffee and a waiter to serve them, and a mediaeval banquet hall to eat them in, and a perfectly awful orchestra behind a thicket of imitation palm-trees to play Hungarian rhapsodies while we ate--instead of five dollars and a half, I should be just as well pleased; because it will amount to about the same thing in the end."

Just then the proprietor of the shop emerged from behind a mound of trousers and overcoats and shuffled toward us very unwillingly, it seemed to me. But Berrisford said he was always like that.

"You can't expect a display of pleasing emotions for a paltry five per cent a month," Berrisford whispered in my ear. I don't think, however, that the pawnbroker could have looked pleasant no matter what per cent he got. He took Berri's beautiful sleeve-links (they 're made of four antique Japanese gold pieces), went into a sort of glass cage built around a high desk and a safe, and did all sorts of queer things to them. He scratched the under side of two of the coins with a small file; then he dabbed some kind of a liquid that he got out of a tiny bottle on the rough places and examined them through one of those inane spool things that jewellers hang on their eyeballs just before telling you that you 've busted your mainspring. Next he weighed them in a pair of scales that he fished out of a drawer in the desk, and finally he held up his claw of a hand with all the fingers distended, for us to inspect through the glass.

"Why, you dreadful old man!" Berrisford exclaimed indignantly. "You gave me five and a half last time. I wouldn't think of taking less."

For a moment I supposed that the game was up and we 'd have to walk all the way back to Cambridge and be too late for luncheon when we got there; for Berrisford took his sleeve-links and strolled over to the door, saying in a loud voice,--

"Come on, Tommy; there 's a better one across the street." But just as we were leaving, "the soiled vampire" made a guttural sound that Berrisford seemed to understand, and we went back and got the amount Berri considered himself entitled to.

"The quality of mercy is a little strained this morning," he said when Mr. Hirsch went into the glass cage again to make out the ticket. I always had an idea that a pawn ticket was a piece of blue cardboard--something like a return theatre ticket. But it is n't, at all. It's simply a thin slip of paper resembling a check--only smaller.

Well, we had a delightful luncheon. After luncheon we thought of going to the matinee and sitting in the gallery, but Berri all at once exclaimed, as if the idea were a sort of inspiration,--

"I 'll tell you what we 'll do; let 's economize. I 've always wanted to; they say you can be awfully nice and contented if you never spend a cent, but just think noble thoughts."

"We might go and look at the pictures in the Public Library and then cross over to the Art Museum," I suggested. "It's free on Saturdays, you know." Berri thought that would be charming, so we walked up Boylston Street, stopping at a florist's on the way to send some American beauties and some violets to Mrs. Hemington, at whose house we dined that Sunday night. (She was thrown out of a carriage the other day and sprained her thumb, and we thought we ought to take some notice of it, as she was very nice about asking us to come to Sunday luncheon whenever we wanted to.)

Berrisford did n't care much for the Puvis de Chavannes pictures in the library,--that is, after he found out that they were as finished as they were ever going to be. At first he was inclined to think them rather promising, and said that by the time they got the second and third coats of paint on they would no doubt do very nicely.

"But the artist is dead," I explained. "And anyhow, he always painted like that."

"Why did n't some one speak to him about it?" said Berri.

"There would n't have been any use; he painted that way on purpose. It was his style--his individuality," I said.

"Do you like it?" he suddenly demanded. He was looking at me very intently, and I did n't know just what to say; for although I 've gone to see the pictures several times, it never occurred to me to ask myself whether I really liked them or not. I supposed--as every one says they are so fine--that I did.

"I don't mean do you know how much they cost, or what people said about them in the backs of magazines when they were first put up. What I want to know is-- Does looking at them give you great pleasure?"

"I think they 're simply preposterous," I said; and then we went outdoors again and over to the Art Museum.

We spent the rest of the afternoon there, sitting in front of a painting by Turner called The Slave Ship, and listening to what the people who passed by said about it. I did n't think there was very much to it--it's merely some small, dark brown legs in a storm at sea with a fire burning. But the people who came to look at it murmured all sorts of things in low, sad voices, and several of them read long extracts from a book that Berri said was by Ruskin. When I asked him how he knew, he answered that it could n't well be by any one else. (A great many people say that Berri's a fool, but I think he knows an awful lot.)

It makes one tired and hungry to criticise pictures all afternoon, and when we left the gallery Berri sat down on the steps and said he could never walk all the way to Cambridge in his exhausted condition; so once more we found ourselves confronted by famine.

Now, if mamma were only here I know I could explain everything to her, and she would n't think me so lacking in respect for my ancestors--so utterly lost--as she evidently does. But until she gets my letter (and perhaps even afterward) she will be unhappy over the crude, unqualified fact that I pawned my watch.

It belonged to my great-grandfather and is a fine old thing with a wreath of gold and platinum roses on its round gold face. I got twenty-five dollars on it. Nobody but Berri would have known, and there would n't have been the least fuss if Uncle Peter had n't come to town.

He was in Boston on business and appeared in my room one afternoon a few days afterward. I was ever so glad to see somebody from home, and I introduced him to Berri, who helped me show him the gym and Soldiers' Field and the glass flowers and pretty much everything open to visitors. He had a lovely time and asked us to dinner in the evening.

We had a pleasant dinner--only Uncle Peter kept glancing at his watch every few minutes (he was leaving on an early train). Finally he said: "What time is it, Tommy? I 'm afraid I 'm slow."

From force of habit I felt for my watch, and then, I suppose, I must have looked queer, for Berrisford began to chuckle, and Uncle Peter, after a moment of mystification, jumped hastily to a conclusion that, I am sorry to say, happened to be correct. He rubbed it in all through dinner and on the way to the station, and I suppose when he reached home he told mamma the first thing. For the evening of the day he arrived I got a telegram from mamma that said: "Redeem watch immediately. Keep this from your father; it would kill him."

Of course Berri had to elaborate the thing in his best style and keep Duggie awake for half an hour while he told him about it.

"I made it very graphic," he said to me gloomily, "but somehow or other it didn't seem to take."

*V*

The crash has come, and the Dean and my adviser, two or three instructors, some of the fellows at the table, and even Berrisford (this last is a little too much), have all taken occasion to inform me regretfully that they foresaw it from the first. This is the sort of thing that makes a man bitter. How did I know what was ahead of me? If they all realized so well that I was going to flunk the hour exams, why did n't they let me know then? It might have done some good if they had told me three weeks ago that they thought me stupid; but I fail to see the point of their giving me to understand at this stage of the game that they themselves all along have been so awfully clever. Yet, that's just what they've done; all except Duggie. And strangely enough it was Duggie that I most dreaded. As a matter of fact he has scarcely mentioned the subject. When I went into his room one night and stood around for a while without knowing how to begin and finally came out with,--

"Well, I suppose Berri 's told you that I didn't get through a single exam?"--he merely said,--

"That 's tough luck; I 'm darned sorry;" and then after a moment he added: "Oh, well, there 'll be some more coming along in February; it is n't as if they were n't going to let you have another whack at things."

"Of course I know it is n't my last chance," I answered drearily; "but I can't help feeling that the fact of its being my first makes it almost as bad. It starts me all wrong in the opinion of the Dean and my adviser and the college generally." Somehow I could n't bring myself to tell Duggie what I thought, and what, in a measure, I still think--namely, that the marks I got were most unjust. There 's something about Duggie--I don't know what it is exactly--that always makes you try to take the tone, when you 're telling him anything, that you feel he would take if he were telling the same thing to you. This sounds rather complicated, but what I mean, for instance, is that if he got E in all his exams and thought the instructors had been unjust, he would probably go and have it out with them, but he would n't complain to any one else. Of course it 's simply nonsense even to pretend, for the sake of argument, that Duggie could flunk in anything; but, anyhow, that 's what I mean.

However, I did n't have the same hesitation in saying to Berrisford that I considered myself pretty badly treated.

"I know, of course, that I didn't write clever papers," I told him, "but I at least wrote long ones. They ought to give me some credit for that; enough to squeeze through on, anyhow." Berri agreed with me perfectly that all the instructors were unjust, yet at the same time he said, with a peculiarly irritating, judicial manner that he sometimes assumes when you least expect it,--

"But I can understand--I can understand. It's most unfortunate--but it 's very human--very natural. As long as we employ this primitive, inadequate method of determining the amount of a man's knowledge, we must expect to collide every now and then with the personal equation." This sounded like a new superintendent addressing the village school board for the first time, but I did n't say anything, as I knew there was something behind it that Berri did n't care just then to make more clear. Berri has exceedingly definite ideas about things, but he "aims to please;" he finds it hard to express himself and at the same time to make everything come out pleasantly in the end.

"What you say is no doubt important and true," I answered; "but I don't know what it means."

"Why, I simply mean that in thinking the matter over one can't get around the fact that ever since college opened you 've been--what shall I say? People have been more aware of you than your size would seem to justify; you 've been, as it were, a cinder in the public eye." Berrisford stopped abruptly, and for a moment looked sort of aghast.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," he exclaimed, more in his natural tone; "I had n't any idea it was coming out that way; that's the trouble with metaphors."

"I don't see how I 've been more of a cinder than any one else--than you've been, for instance," I objected. "I 've seen more of you than I 've seen of any one, and I 've been seen more with you," I added.

"That's the frightful injustice of it," Berrisford put in triumphantly. "That's what I 'm trying to get at." (I don't believe he was at all, but I let him continue.) "We 've always done about the same things--but fate has ordained that in every instance you were to leave your impress upon the wax of hostile opinion, while I was as the house of sand, effaced by Neptune's briny hand. (Doesn't that last sound exactly like Pope at his worst?) You see, you got yourself arrested at the very beginning of things. Of course, socially speaking, it was a brilliant move; it simply made you. But on the other hand, I don't think it helped very much to--to--well, to bring you thoroughly in touch with the Faculty; and one has to look out for that. Then, you know, of all the hundreds that swarmed down the fire-escape during Professor Kinde's lectures, you were the only one who had the misfortune to be caught. This naturally made the fire-escape impossible from then on, and once more turned the garish light of publicity upon you. And to cap all--you were inspired to give Mr. Much the fine arts book. Why, my dear child, your name is a household word!"

The incident of the fine arts book, I confess, was enough to make a man just give up and turn cynical.

Mr. Much is a Boston architect who comes out from town twice a week to lecture on ancient art. They think a great deal of him in Boston. He stands at the head of his profession there, because, as he's never built anything, even the most critical have no grounds for complaint. Berri says there are lots of people like that in Boston,--painters and writers and musicians who are really very great, but think it more refined just to "live" their works. He meets them at his aunt's house, where they often gather to talk it all over. Well, at the first lecture Much told us to buy and read carefully a certain treatise on ancient art and always bring it to the lectures, as he would refer to it frequently. I acted on his advice to the extent of examining the book in the co-operative store one day; but it was large and heavy and the illustrations were rather old-fashioned, and it cost two dollars, so I decided I could get along without it. Most of the fellows did the same thing, and the impulsive few who actually bought it got tired after a while of lugging it to the lectures, as Much did n't show any intention of ever referring to it.

One morning as I was strolling over to hear him tell about the influence of Greek something or other on something else, and the deplorable decadence it had undergone later at the hands of the Romans, Hemington darted out of a bookstore in the Square and said: "If you 're going to Fine Arts, just take this book and give it to Bertie Stockbridge." (Bertie is his roommate.) "I 'm going to cut; I have to meet my father in town." I took the book and pursued my way.

Now, that morning, for the first time, Much, after lecturing for about half an hour, surprised every one by breaking off abruptly and saying,--

"There's a very helpful note on page eighteen of Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient Art that I wish you would all turn to." Then after a moment he added: "As some of us may have failed to bring the book this morning, I think I shall read the note in question aloud." He came to the edge of the platform and with a solicitous smile held out his hand; but no one in the front row had a book to lend him. His smile changed to an expression of mild disgust, and he glanced along the second row of seats. No one responded, however, and he swept the room with a look of annoyance, exclaiming, "Come--come," and snapping his fingers impatiently. Just then the fellow next to me murmured: "Will any lady or gentleman in the audience kindly lend me a high hat, three rabbits, and a dozen fresh eggs?" and I laughed. And as I laughed, I leaned over to hide my face--and there on my lap was Geschmitzenmenger's Ancient Art; after Hemington had given it to me I was so interested in whether he would catch his car or not that I had never looked at it at all.

"Is it possible that no one has provided himself with the book I requested you to procure?" Mr. Much was asking incredulously. I saw my chance to make a hit, and after a moment of impressive silence I arose and walked to the platform. There was a gust of dumfounded laughter, followed by prolonged applause. As I went back to my seat all the fellows who could reach me insisted on patting me on the back and grasping me by the hand. It was most embarrassing. But the really sickening part of it was to come.