“You’re in luck,” said Archag. “I didn’t have anybody to pilot me around when I first went to Aintab.”
“Pshaw!” said Levon, shrugging his shoulders. “I can get on all right by myself, you won’t need to bother about me.”
He was a very independent boy, and was delighted with the idea of going to college. However, when his old mother put her arms around him and cried, and his father squeezed his hand very hard, to hide his feelings, and the time had come when he must say good-by to the careless life of childhood, his bravado vanished, and he no longer tried to hide the tears that filled his eyes.
Time passes swiftly: our friends are now Seniors, in their last year at college. They have changed very little during the last two years; they have grown tall, and seem more serious, that is all. They have the good reputation of the college at heart, and their importance is recognized, for Dr. Mills has entrusted to them the responsibility of seeing that the boys of the other classes obey the rules. At recreation-hour, instead of shouting and playing and tumbling about like young puppies, they walk up and down in small groups, discussing every subject that comes into their heads, from the dinner which was not to their taste, to deep problems of ethics and philosophy. Aram alone is just the same, loving a joke as well as ever, and never done chaffing his classmates about their solemn airs and judicial scowls.
The Rossinians spent the summer in Anti-Taurus, and stayed for a fortnight at Aintab on their way back to Aleppo. Winnie was sun-burned and brown as a little Arab. Miss Pritchard was glad to be returning to Aleppo, preferring the comforts of home to the beauties of nature.
Nejib and his friends dined with the Rossinians every evening, and Archag was in the seventh heaven on these occasions; his greatest happiness was to be near Winnie and look at her, and it was not very long before Aram observed this dumb adoration, and teased him well for it.
One evening Winnie and our friends were talking about Armenia, and Archag told the story of Rupen, and of the atrocities committed at Moosh and Sassoun.
“But now,” said he joyously, “that bad dream is over, and we have forgotten our hereditary hatred.”
Winnie listened in silence; her heart beat faster whenever Archag confided to her his plans and his desire to study medicine and settle down at Bitlis, that desolate town where there was not a single doctor, and where the people, mown down by epidemics, were dying like flies, for want of intelligent care. The lad had a high conception of his duty toward his neighbor, and Winnie thought him the best person she had ever known.