“I’ve never been able to figure out why Harvard always gives such pepless parties compared to other colleges. I’d never mention it to a Harvard man, because you know it’s just as bad as discussing religion, you never get anywhere—but why do you suppose it is?”
“Never having been to a Harvard affair——”
“I shall die to-night, simply pass out, that’s all. I’m sunk when I think of it. I just will make Hal take me somewhere else, that’s all. In the first place everyone brings a girl and you know that’s wrong. It leaves absolutely no stags. That ruins everything right there.”
“Poor Harvard! Getting knocked for single-mindedness,” Joy murmured.
“That’s just what it is! At the Harvard-Yale game last fall, some Yale men, friends of Greg’s, came over and cut in on me at the tea dance afterwards—they really made the dance almost good—and the Harvard men were simply furious! They’ve just got their minds set on straight dances!”
“Oh, well, you can’t generalize. All Harvard men can’t be so resourceful that they enjoy having a whole dance with a girl.”
Before Félicie had this sifted down, the taxi-man drew up and informed them that they would have to walk from there.
The little clouds that had threatened like a baby’s playful fist in the sapphire laughter of the sky, were now striking blows of grey menace into the blue.
“Didn’t I know it would rain!” Félicie wailed. “Just look at that sky. Why do they have the Stadium exercises out-doors?”
Scattered lines of people hurrying to the Stadium; hundreds and hundreds of girls in all colours of organdy, with organdy hats—and spotless white slippers. Complacent mothers; excited fathers, trying not to look too proud; nondescript and sometimes awful people who would be lumped under the gross head, Relations; all urging their way to the Stadium. It seemed as if the world was at Harvard Class Day—the world, and its Relations. As they were led to their cold stone seats by a brick-cheeked youth who hid his admiration beneath a mask of “Harvard indifference,” a treble voice lifted itself out of the crowd.