Rose placed him at once. He was another college man. Paul and Etta joined them and they made a fine group. They were soon as free as schoolmates, laughing, telling stories, and fighting over the East and the West.
Rose stoutly defended the western colleges; they had their place, she said.
"So they have," Elbert said, "but let them keep it."
"Their place is at the head, and that's where we'll put them soon," she said.
Elbert told a story about hazing a western boy at Yale. He grew excited and sprang up to dramatize it. He stood on one foot and screwed up his face, while the rest shrieked with laughter, all except Rose, who thought it unjust.
Mason looked on from his low chair with a revealing touch of envious sadness. He had gone past that life—past the land of youth and love—past the islands of mirth and minstrelsy. He was facing a cold, gray sea, with only here and there a grim granite reef gnawing the water into foam.
It made him long to be part of that again, therefore he valued Rose more at that moment than ever before. "The girl has imagination, she has variety. She is not a simple personality. At the concert she was exalted, rapt, her eyes deep. Tonight she is a school-girl. Then it was Wagner—now it is college horse-play."
Isabel came up to sit a moment by him.
"Isn't she fine? I think I surprised young Harvey. I thought I'd like to have her meet him—he's such a fine fellow. She should meet someone else beside us old fogies."
Mason winced a little.