Mauney felt unlikely to transgress many of these tacit rules of conduct. He was quiet enough in disposition to melt into the quiet shadows of the place, and was fond enough of the inhabitants to pattern his superficial manners after theirs. But he well knew that there was danger of breaking one of the rules. He had not yet passed the stage referred to in number eight, and was quite liable to burst forth enthusiastically to some one. His enthusiasm for his books and the sheer happiness he obtained from them was dangerously concealed. It troubled him. He wanted to talk to Max Lee, and longed for his return. Then, too, the present, though charming, was so incomplete! The others at the boarding house truly lived for the present moment, but Mauney was feeling the great future beating like a pulse. He was standing like a benighted sailor on the dark coast, feeling the break of waves he could not distinctly see, and coveting the dawn when all would be revealed.
CHAPTER III.
The Other Half of the Class.
“A morning sun, and a wine-bred child and a Latin-bred woman seldom end well.”—Herbert’s Collection.
Mauney met Lorna Freeman the first day of college. He did not know her name at first, but she impressed him. This was partly because certain grooves, instituted that day, promised to guide her in his company for the next four years, brilliant in prospect. It happened that out of the great University of Merlton, only two first year students had chosen the “straight” history course. Many others had elected to take combined courses of history plus something else or other, but of the entire academic population of the first year only two showed the real specialist thirst for history alone. This meant that they would receive much that the others would not. They would be inducted more deeply into the records of human development. They would be together, a class all by themselves, at times, penetrating further than the dilettanti, who stopped with constitutional history of Germany. For these two out-and-out students there would be interesting journeys afield.
He faced Lorna Freeman, therefore, with at least the vague knowledge that they two were the real, serious history class. They enrolled together with the assistant professor of history, Dr. Alfred K. Tanner, M.A., Ph.D., D.C.L. (and other degrees usually taken for granted), in his particular upstairs office in one of the wings of the Arts Building. Miss Freeman had already submitted her name, just as any other student might have done, although there were reasons, as shall be seen, why it was superfluous. There were a score of students outside Dr. Tanner’s door, waiting to be enrolled. But they were the part-timers, the non-specialists, the great unwashed. First attention must be given to the “straight” students, and Alfred Tanner had already given his attention to Lorna Freeman, had waved her to a stiff chair by the mullioned windows, and was now giving his attention to Mauney.
He was a big, energetic figure, even as he sat behind his flat-topped desk, with a look of keen awareness mixed with love of his work. He was grey, and bald, and hugely present. He leaned forward, gesticulating, snapping his grey eyes eagerly.
“Your name is what?” he asked.
“Bard.”