"Hello, you dear old buzzard! How dare you turn me out in the cold this way?" he called to her; and as she came in, he jumped up and took both her hands. "I 'm so glad to see you again." She gave him a little push, and looked pleased.
"Law, Mr. Duggie—how you talk! He's got real fleshy—ain't he?" she added, looking at me. She asked him where he 'd been all summer, and he told her he 'd been off shooting in the Rocky Mountains, and had brought her a breastpin made of an elk's tooth that she'd have to wear on Sundays when she went to see her married daughter in Somerville. I thought I ought to leave, but did not know how to interrupt them exactly; so I turned and examined some silver cups on the mantelpiece. There were five beauties, but I could n't make out the inscriptions on them.
"You 've had lots of visitors the last few days. They kept a-comin' to find out when you 'll be back. The Dean was here to-day—a real sociable gentleman, aren't he?—and he wants you to go right 'round and see him as soon as you can. And yesterday that little man—I forget his name—oh, you know, he's the President of the Crimson—came to find out about something. He said you were the only one who could tell him. And then there 've been lots of young men to see about the football—oh, my, just crowds of them, and they all left notes. I 'll run down and get them, and then I 'll put up your bed."
After she left, I said good-night. It's awfully late, and I have to get up early, to be in time to register.
I wonder who he is. I hope he didn't think I was fresh. I don't believe he did, though, for as I was going he said,—
"We 're such near neighbors, you must drop in when you haven't anything better to do."
Mamma's train must have passed Utica by this time.
II
Well, I 've learned a lot of things during the past week, that are n't advertised in the catalogue. If I 've neglected to make a note of them until now, it has been my misfortune, and not my fault.
We registered on Wednesday morning—Freshmen have to register the day before college really opens—and I confess I was a little disappointed at the informal way such an important act of one's life is done. In the first place, as you can drop in any time between nine A.M. and one P.M., you don't see the whole class together. Then the room we registered in might have been in the High School at home. I don't know what I expected exactly, but it certainly was n't a bare, square room, a desk on a low platform, some plaster casts, and a lot of plain wooden chairs arranged in rows on an inclined plane. However, when I think the matter over, I don't see what else they could have.