bending as a soft breeze ruffled the surface into tiny waves. The hills already
brilliant with color—scarlet, burnt orange, mauve, and purple—flamed up to meet
the clear blue sky; the elms softly rustled their drying leaves; the white houses of
the village retreated coyly behind maples and firs and elms: everywhere there
was peace, the peace that comes with strength that has been stronger than time.
As Hugh Carver hastened up the hill from the station, his two suit-cases banged
his legs and tripped him. He could hardly wait to reach the campus. The journey
had been intolerably long—Haydensville was more than three hundred miles
from Merrytown, his home—and he was wild to find his room in Surrey Hall. He
wondered how he would like his room-mate, Peters.... What's his name? Oh, yes,
Carl.... The registrar had written that Peters had gone to Kane School.... Must be
pretty fine. Ought to be first-class to room with.... Hugh hoped that Peters
wouldn't think that he was too country....
Hugh was a slender lad who looked considerably less than his eighteen years. A
gray cap concealed his sandy brown hair, which he parted on the side and which
curled despite all his brushing. His crystalline blue eyes, his small, neatly carved
nose, his sensitive mouth that hid a shy and appealing smile, were all very
boyish. He seemed young, almost pathetically young.
People invariably called him a nice boy, and he didn't like it; in fact, he wanted to
know how they got that way. They gave him the pip, that's what they did. He
guessed that a fellow who could run the hundred in 10: 2 and out-box anybody in
high school wasn't such a baby. Why, he had overheard one of the old maid
teachers call him sweet. Sweet! Cripes, that old hen made him sick. She was
always pawing him and sticking her skinny hands in his hair. He was darn glad to
get to college where there were only men teachers.
Women always wanted to get their hands into his hair, and boys liked him on
sight. Many of those who were streaming up the hill before and behind him, who
passed him or whom he passed, glanced at his eager face and thought that there
was a guy they'd like to know.
An experienced observer would have divided those boys into three groups:
preparatory school boys, carelessly at ease, well dressed, or, as the college
argot has it, "smooth"; boys from city schools, not so well dressed perhaps,
certainly not so sure of themselves; and country boys, many of them miserably
confused and some of them clad in Kollege Kut Klothes that they would
shamefacedly discard within a week.
Hugh finally reached the top of the hill, and the campus was before him. He had
visited the college once with his father and knew his way about. Eager as he was
to reach Surrey Hall, he paused to admire the pseudo-Gothic chapel. He felt a
little thrill of pride as he stared in awe at the magnificent building. It had been
willed to the college by an alumnus who had made millions selling rotten pork.
Hugh skirted two of the factory laboratories, hurried between the Doric temple
and Byzantine mosque, paused five times to direct confused classmates, passed
a dull red colonial building, and finally stood before Surrey Hall, a large brick
dormitory half covered by ivy.
He hurried up-stairs and down a corridor until he found a door with 19 on it. He
knocked.
