Miss Thayer welcomed him effusively.
“I knew you wouldn’t have the vaguest idea of how to get up to the college,” she was saying, “and so I came down for you myself. No, I didn’t bring my trap. I knew you would enjoy the walk up, and I wanted to show you it myself. I remember how fond you were of walking, last summer,” she added, with a bright smile at him.
Newbold stared a little.
“I don’t think,” he began doubtfully; but Miss Thayer interrupted him quickly—
“You cannot imagine how anxious the girls are to see you. Each one wants to show you what she is particularly interested in. Really you are quite a martyr—I mean a hero—in our eyes! We will go up this way,” she ran on. “It’s a little longer and there is a pretty bad hill, but of course a man doesn’t mind a little extra exertion, and it’s even more beautiful than the other way.”
Newbold said he would be charmed to go any way that Miss Thayer might choose, but that he didn’t want to lose any of his visit at the college, and that perhaps it would be wiser to take the short cut. But Miss Thayer said that if they walked a little faster they would get there just as soon, and he would see the finer view, too. So they started off briskly, and Newbold wished that he had worn the other pair of patent leathers, and finally, when he felt ready to drop, and thought they must have walked about five miles, and she told him they had only two more to go, he blamed himself most severely for not having firmly refused anything but the short cut and a cab. One of Miss Thayer’s friends who met her told her the next day that she was glad to see that she had joined the Pedestrian Club, and that she had often wondered why she had not done so before.
“I hardly think it is worth while to go into the drawing-room now,” remarked Miss Thayer, argumentatively, as they strolled up the broad drive to the college. “I see Miss Atterbury down there on the campus playing tennis, and I promised to bring you to her immediately,” she went on. Newbold felt a horrible inclination to say that he didn’t care if he never met Miss Atterbury, and that personally he would very
much prefer going into the drawing-room and stopping there for the rest of the afternoon, in the most comfortable chair to be found; but he managed to murmur a weary assent to Miss Thayer’s proposition, and together they started down the steep hill at the bottom of which stretched the campus. But he could not seem to keep up with Miss Thayer, and by the time he had reached the tennis grounds and had decided that in all probability his heart would never beat normally again, he was conscious that he was bowing, and that Miss Atterbury, flushed from playing, was standing before him and was laughing and saying—“I don’t often give acquaintances such a warm welcome!” The next thing he knew was that someone had thrust a racket into his hand, and he heard, as in a dream, Miss Thayer telling her friend that Mr. Newbold was a splendid tennis-player, and that she would have to do her best to beat him, but that she hoped she would for the honor of the college. And then he found himself, somehow, walking over to the court, and, before he could protest, Miss Atterbury was on the other side, and was asking him kindly but briskly if he were ready to play. He thought he was as near ready as he ever would be, so he said “Play!” and waited resignedly for her serve.
It was just after Miss Atterbury had piled up an appalling number of games against him, and he had come to the conclusion that he knew what it would be like to stand fire from a Krupp gun, and had decided that tight patent leathers and a long coat were not just what he would have chosen to play tennis in, that he saw Miss Atterbury, to his intense relief, throw down her racket and run up the hill a little way. She was back in an instant with Miss Thayer and a tall, handsome girl, carrying a lot of golf clubs. When young Newbold saw the golf clubs he felt so tired that he thought he would sit down on the cold ground, although he knew how dangerous such a proceeding was, especially when he was so painfully aware of how hot his head was and how clammy his linen felt.