“I’m glad you wakened me, Priddy. I fall asleep quite often. One night I nearly got frozen to death. I didn’t have a roommate. Thanks. Turn off the light, won’t you.”
After the Crucifixion I closed the Scroll and snuggled into bed with Thropper. My first day in Evangelical University had ended.
Chapter IV. Thundering Gymnastics.
How to Keep on the
Good Side of the Young Women
with Scriptural Quotations. The
Establishment of Friendship.
Carrying Water for Beauty.
How Music may be Something
More than Music. The Wonderful,
Austere Man that Thropper
Led me to
I LINKED myself to the following day’s life by clutching the gaudy comforter in both my hands while I sat up in bed, startled by a thundering that shook Pungo Hall.
“What’s—that?” I gasped, turning towards Thropper, expecting to discover that the vibrations had brought him up in alarm.
“It’s only ‘Budd’ doing his gymnastics,” he muttered, drowsily, “what time?”
“Six.”
“Better get up and go over to the dining-room at half-past,” he explained. “Say,” he added, lifting up his head, “you wouldn’t mind letting me know at twenty minutes past, would you, Priddy?”
“Not at all, Thropper.” He dropped half under the clothes and in a surprising manner was soon invested in all the dignity of thorough repose.
From that moment until the clamor of the rising bell, at half-past six, the heart of Pungo Hall was turned into a huge alarm clock, for first in this corner, then in that, on this floor and then on that, intermittent clatterings of clocks brought intermittent yawns and mutterings as the different students were signalled by their unsleeping timepieces. Every noise seemed to pierce from room to room as if it went through telegraphic sounding boards. Splashings, jumpings, muttered prayers, readings aloud, animated conversations: these increased as half-past six drew near. The Monday morning, with its new week of study, demanding a fresh enthusiasm after the Sabbath’s interruption, was not being approached in any business manner. Over the banister, leading to the top floor, a voice exclaimed, so that all could hear, “Say, Headstone, how fine you looked last night with Her!” To which an answer came from a suddenly opened door, “Thank you!” Then over that banister, into the laundry basket, in a dark corner of the hall, the bed wash was hurled accompanied by dull thuds.