“‘I didn’t know at first that you were Haydock, not until I found your note. I’m very, very glad to know, because Hugh used to talk more about you in his letters and when he was at home than he did about any of the others. I think he looked up to you most of all,’ and she told me some of the things he had said and written.”
Haydock often wondered if repeating things to your mother that you wouldn’t repeat to any one else, made up for the things you couldn’t tell her at all. This passed through his mind now.
“I’m afraid it’s just as well I never met Wellington,” he added. “Well, there wasn’t much else. When we got to the station, I left Nate and the others to attend to things, and went into the car with Mrs. Wellington. She had the stateroom,—I’d got that for her when I went in town in the morning,—and there wasn’t anything to do but give her her ticket, and say good-bye. I had a feeling as if I ought to go on with her and see the thing through; but I’d cut one examination already—I managed to flunk two more—and she probably wouldn’t have let me anyhow. I did hunt up the conductor and give him the other ticket,—you have to have two, you know,—and told him to take care of it, and not let her see it; it had a grisly word scribbled across it. She smiled when she said good-bye—oh, so sadly.”
Haydock stood up and stretched himself.
“Did you ever hear from her again?” asked Mrs. Haydock.
“Oh, yes, I had a letter very soon. I had all his books and furniture and stuff packed up and sent home, you know. She told me to keep anything I wanted, because—oh, I’ll show you the letter some day. I kept the picture with ‘For Hugo’ written on the back. It’s over in my room.” He went down the steps, Mrs. Haydock following. They walked along the Delta, past John Harvard, and across to one of the paths in the Yard once more, sprinkled now with men hurrying to Memorial.
“It was such a queer waste, his having lived and come here at all,” mused Philip. “I suppose that sounds awfully kiddish and tiresome to you, doesn’t it?” he asked more lightly, looking at his mother.
“No,” she answered; “it sounded very old the way you said it.”
BUTTERFLIES
JOHN RICE—somehow he was never called “Jack”—and Billy Ware roomed together, it was said, because their mothers were congenial. These ladies certainly had, in common, the bond of sweet stupidity, or they never would have put into practice the ideal arrangement of having their sons share the same apartment. Rice was always, and with justice, spoken of as “a very fine man.” He was well put together and fine looking. His sense of duty was fine, also his sense of honour. He possessed a fine lot of commonplace ideas about many things, and carried with him an air of fine, if indefinite, purpose. On the whole, Billy considered him uninteresting.