Left to himself, Tom sat down and looked about the room that was to be his for the Freshman year. It had a good view of the campus and buildings, and he liked it very much.
“Though I should be glad if I had a good chum to come in with me,” reflected the new student. “I may get in with somebody, though. It’s rather lonesome to have two beds in one room, but I can sleep half the night in one, and half the night in the other I suppose,” he ended, with a smile.
Tom was unpacking his belongings from his valise when the expressman arrived with his trunk, and a little later the matron knocked at the door to ask if our hero found himself at home.
“Yes, thank you,” replied Tom, accepting the clean towels she brought. He had begun to hang up his clothes.
“I do hope you get a nice young man in with you,” suggested Mrs. Blackford. “One who won’t be cutting up, and doing all sorts of mischievous pranks.”
Tom proceeded with getting his room to rights as she left him, and a little later, finding that it wanted an hour yet to twelve o’clock, our hero strolled out on the campus.
He looked about for a sight of Sam Heller, or his crony, Johnson, who, it appeared later, had passed his examinations, and was a Sophomore, while Sam had to remain a Freshman, much to his disgust. But the two, whom Tom had come to feel were his enemies, were not in sight. Nor was Reddy Burke, and, though Tom strolled over past Elmwood Castle, he did not get a sight of Bruce Bennington.
Tom strolled about until lunch, and the mid-day meal was not a very jolly affair. About twenty Freshmen, who had come a day before the term formally opened, were at the tables and they were all rather miserable, like fishes out of water, as Tom reflected. Still our hero talked with them, experiences were exchanged, and the ice was broken.
“But I don’t exactly cotton to any of them enough to have one for a roommate,” reflected Tom.
That afternoon, having formally registered, and being told about the hours for chapel, and his lecture and recitation periods, Tom wrote a long letter to his father and mother.