“Gee,” exclaimed Burns, “those big upper porches look cold enough now, but I’ll bet they make dandy places to sleep this summer. You can lie right in your bunk and watch the moonlight on the lake.”
They filed through the door and stood looking admiringly around them. The whole ground floor, twenty-four by thirty-six feet, was one big club room with a big fireplace opposite the door and plenty of windows. The furniture was built of pine two by sixes, crude but massive and well suited to the log building. In the city the place would have looked rough enough, but there in the backwoods it looked like a castle and the fellows immediately adopted it as such.
“Isn’t this great?” Scott said. “When we get a good big fire whooping up that chimney and our library here, it can rain all it pleases.”
“Yes,” Bill said, “and I’ll bet more than one mosquito will dull his bill trying to bore through those tamarack logs. I’m going to file my claim on this big morris chair right now, and I’ll put on those gloves there on the wall with any man who wants to dispute it.”
The crowd wandered upstairs. It was the same as the downstairs save that there was no fireplace and the only furniture was some twenty steel bunks with wire springs. Big double doors on each end opened onto twelve-foot screened porches.
“Me for the outside, right now,” said Merton, proceeding to drag one of the bunks out onto the north porch.
“Well,” said Scott, “I’ll join you. It may be a little cold at first but we get the pick of the locations if we get out now. There’ll be a rush for it the first warm night. Better take the west end, the sun will not get in on you there so early in the morning.”
“Long head,” Merton answered, dragging his bunk across. “Get a better view of the lake, too. Isn’t that great? There’s the post office up there and the ‘town site’ the fellows used to laugh about. Let’s go see Professor Mertz and find out what there is to be done.”
But they did not have to look for Professor Mertz; he was downstairs waiting for them. He smiled at their enthusiasm over their new quarters.
“Well, fellows,” he began sociably, “I see that you recognize the possibilities of this place for having a good time, and you are not mistaken in it. You’ll have the time of your lives. But I want to call your attention to some of the other features. You must remember that this is the University and everyone will judge the University by what you do here. Think every time before you do anything, what effect it is going to have on the school. Its reputation here depends on you entirely.