“Excuse me, Parmenter,” continued Robinson, “we don’t want to drive you from your room; we will go elsewhere if you wish it.”
Parmenter did not at once reply. He rose, went to the door and locked it, closed the ventilator over the door, and returned and sat down. Then he said, “Go on with the story.”
What took place behind that closed and locked door none but the seven who were there, and the seven who were afterward taken into the company, ever knew.
The time was when the raids of the Gamma Questers, as hazing parties were called at Concord College, were of frequent occurrence. But under the severely repressive policy of the faculty, aided by a growing feeling among upper classmen against the barbarous and unmanly custom, the practice had nearly died out. There were scarcely a dozen men in the college who remembered the last instance of it.
Yet there is no doubt that a chapter of the Gamma Questers was organized that day in Parmenter’s room; neither is there any doubt that it selected Freshman Van Loan as an unwilling candidate for admission and initiation.
Under the excitement and impulse of the moment Lee was the readiest to advocate this form of retribution, and the most fertile in devising plans to carry it out. But a few days later he came to Parmenter with a cloud on his face and a burden on his mind.
“It’s about that Van Loan business,” he explained. “I’m half sorry I agreed to go into it. You know how strongly father is set against everything of this sort.”
“Do you propose to let your father know you’re in it?” asked Parmenter, half in sarcasm.