“Gracious! Would I be excitement?”
David reddened under Ruth’s merry glance. If Lester knew, wouldn’t he want to kick him!
“I’m very well satisfied with the arrangement,” Ruth said. “I can see Lester play, and I can sit and talk with you. It will all be such fun. I’ve never seen a Harvard-Yale game. How nice of your mother to ask me down for it! And what luck to have such a heavenly day! Oh, David, I know I’m going to have the best time of my whole life!”
“If we lick Yale,” said David.
“I suppose that will be necessary. But I feel we shall; I feel that nothing will happen to spoil the good time that I’m going to have.”
On the way to Cambridge David tried to tell her about Lester—his brilliancy, his popularity, his magnificent success. But she turned him from that theme and began putting questions about his own accomplishments. She drew from him the admission that he had captained his class eleven and that it had won the championship, that he had been taken into a certain club, that he stood a chance of getting a degree magna cum laude; afterwards David’s cheeks burned when he thought it all over; he must have appeared a veritable monster of egotism. She conducted her researches so skillfully that the quivering subject was hardly aware of them even while reluctantly yielding up its riches. David wondered how, when he had been making this egregious display of himself, he could possibly have imagined that he was having a good time!
One thing he was sure of: if she enjoyed the day as much as she appeared to do, her enjoyment was not wholly at his expense.
“It’s all such an adventure for me!” she confided to him. “I love to get away from the school now and then and meet new people and see old friends. Am I going to see Mr. Dean, David?”
“Of course you are. He’s looking forward to it. He told me to bring you out to the house just as quick as I could. We’re to have an early lunch and then start for the game. Afterwards mother has asked a few people in for tea, and Lester’s coming.”
“Oh, what fun!” caroled Ruth. “And what a heavenly day! I hope every one will have a good time to-day!”