She may have thought this was pure bragging, she may have been reconciled to it. At any rate she made no answer, and let me go to my room without a word of comment.
And it was only two weeks later, when I was comfortably settled in my room on the campus, that I received a stormy letter from her, calling me a "most ungrateful monster of a nephew."
XV
COLLEGE LIFE
Across the hall from Trevelyan's rooms lived one of the college "grinds." Now that I had moved there and came and went at all hours of the day, I saw this man often.
Fallon—that was his name—stood fully six-feet four, and had about a thirty-two-inch waist. He stooped until his thin shoulder blades were at directly right angles to each other. He would never talk to any one he met on his way; his nose was always deep in the book which he held outspread. He was the most ferocious grind I have ever known.
Next to Fallon lived Waters, a cheery, well-dressed little person, who had pink cheeks and no disturbing thoughts. Waters was a member of one of the minor fraternities; he spoke longingly of the day when he would be living in his "chapter lodge." Waters was easy company. He had four hundred "friends" around the campus, and when I met him was engaged in capitalizing on those friendships by canvassing votes for his election to a team managership.
That perhaps is why he came into my room so often to sit and chat pleasantly, lightly, about almost every topic known to the college man. He was very much of a type. There were at least thirty other men in that class who were like him, no better nor worse, nor more nor less attractive than he was. Popularity was an end and a means with him. It was all he wanted of college.