“I wronged Professor Lee!” interrupted Parmenter, hotly. “I wronged him terribly. I contributed my share, and it wasn’t a small one, to his son’s disgrace; and I’ve never said to him one word of contrition, of repentance, or regret. It’s too late to make him any adequate reparation now; but I can be here to meet him and Charley when they land, to acknowledge my fault to him, to tell him of my grief and humility, and ask him to try me again, and prove me that I am wiser and juster than I was. Now tell me, professor, isn’t that the least that I can do and have any semblance of a man about me?”
Parmenter had risen in his excitement, and stood with flashing eyes, flushed face, and heaving breast. Delavan went up to him and took both his hands.
“I understand you, my dear fellow,” he said, quietly. “You are right. Come, let’s telegraph up to them that we’ll not be there. Then we’ll go back up town.”
Commencement Day dawned bright and beautiful. It always did. No one had ever known a rainy Commencement Day at Old Concord; and the day was just as beautiful on New York Bay as it was in the college city.
The ocean vessel had been sighted late in the morning; and the excursion steamer, with more than a hundred enthusiastic men and women on board, was pulling rapidly down to meet her.
The little boat was gay with bunting. Flags and banners floated from every pole and post. A great streamer at the bow bore the name of “Concord,” and another at the stern displayed the college cry.
There was a brass band on the boat, and a brass cannon; and lest these should not meet the anticipated demand for noise, every person on board was supplied with a college fish-horn. But the party failed to reach quarantine in time. They had hardly got below Governor’s Island when the black hull of the great vessel loomed up on the smoky horizon, beating up the bay toward them. Ten minutes later the two steamers, big and little, were directly opposite, though at some distance from each other. Then the reception began.
It was peculiarly a college boys’ reception. Human throats vied with brass instruments, with booming cannon, and the blare of horns in proclaiming welcome to the travelers.
When the people on the big steamer realized that the demonstration was for some of their number, they crowded to the side of the vessel, and waved handkerchiefs and hats.
After a few minutes one of the upper guard rails was cleared, for a little space, of all the human figures save one. That one no one who knew him could fail to distinguish as “Sammy Lee.” He stood, with bared head, waving his hat in one hand and his handkerchief in the other, and apparently shouting some response at the top of his voice.