Hand in hand they went along the corridor and down the stairs. Outside the building the father turned and took his son into his arms. That last kiss became one of David’s sweetest and saddest memories.
It was surprising even to himself how soon he fitted into place. His seat in chapel, his desk in the schoolroom, his locker in the gymnasium, his place in the dining-hall—at the end of a week he thought of them as if they had always been his. In the same short time he was recognized as the fellow who was likely to lead his division of the fifth form in scholarship. His uncomfortable zeal for study and his tendency to forge instantly to the head of his class, regardless of being a “new kid,” were not conducive to the attainment of popularity. So, although in superficial ways the school soon became a second home to him, he felt that in the things that counted he remained a stranger.
He was disappointed in his expectation that Lester Wallace would come forward and welcome him. When in Mr. Dean’s Latin class he first heard Wallace called on to recite, he glanced round in eager interest. A stocky, smiling, good-natured-looking youth was slowly rising to his feet; his voice, as he began to translate, was lazy, yet had a pleasant tone; his manner when he came to a full stop in the middle of an involved sentence that had entangled him suggested that he was humorously amused by a puzzle rather than concentrating his mind on the solution. He acquiesced without rancor in Mr. Dean’s suggestion that he had better sit down. Later when David was called on to recite, he wondered whether Wallace was looking at him with any interest; he wondered whether the name of Ives had any significance for Wallace. Apparently it had not, for after the hour Wallace passed David on the stairs without pausing to speak.
When the noon recess came some of the fellows, instead of dispersing to the dormitories, lingered in groups outside the study building. Among them was Wallace, and with the faint hope that Wallace might now come up to him, David lingered, too. He was too shy to make any advances to one who was an “old” boy, too proud to court the friendship of one who was obviously well known and popular; yet Wallace, with his pleasant, lazy voice, twinkling eyes, and leisurely air of good nature, attracted him. While he stood looking on, a girl, perhaps fifteen years old, came through the rectory gate just across the road; she was tossing a baseball up and catching it and now and then thumping it into the baseball glove that she wore on her left hand. She was slender and graceful, and the smile with which she responded to the general snatching off of caps seemed to David sweet and fascinating; her large straw hat prevented him from determining how pretty she was, but he was sure about her smile and her rosy cheeks and her merry eyes.
“Here you are, Ruth!” Lester Wallace held up his hands.
She threw the ball to him, straight and swift, with a motion very like a boy’s, and yet oddly, indescribably feminine. He returned it, and she caught it competently.
“Isn’t any one going to play scrub?” she asked. At once Wallace cried, “Yes; one!” She cried, “Two!”—and they danced about while the others shouted for places. When they had all moved off toward the upper school with the girl and Wallace in the lead, David followed, partly out of curiosity and partly also out of reluctance to dismiss quickly such a pleasant person from his sight.
He watched the game of scrub behind the upper school and was struck by the girl’s skill, her freedom and grace of action, her fearlessness in facing and catching hard-hit balls, and also by the rather more than brotherly courtesy of all the fellows; they seemed to try to give her the best chances and yet never to condescend too much. Apparently she and Wallace were especially good friends; she reproached him slangily, “O Lester, you lobster!” and he was often comforting or encouraging—“Take another crack at it, Ruth!” “Beat it, Ruth, beat it!” and once in rapture at a stop that she had made, “Oh, puella pulchrissima!”
Looking on, David felt there was another person in the school besides Wallace that he would very much like to know. He ventured to ask a boy standing by who the girl was.