"Don't, please don't!" cried Lawrence. There came up before him in his sick mind lurid, revolting scenes, and in them a fair-faced boy with a sensitive mouth learning to like it all. Then came a third wave—"Who will be responsible? What are you going to do about it?" This was a little too much for Lawrence. He felt powerless to think it out just now. He would need time for this. Unconsciously he stepped back to the rug. He lay there, very quiet, almost motionless, until far into the night.
Then he arose, a very different boy from Lawrence the President, greatly feared of under-classmen, and felt his way through the dark to the bedroom. Here he locked the door and prayed to God, as he had been brought up to do.
The next morning one of the clerks, harrying by the ticker where Colonel Lawrence seemed to be bending over the tape, suddenly exclaimed, "Why, what is it, sir? Nothing serious, I hope?"
Old Colonel Lawrence, drawing himself up and gazing straight ahead of him as he crumpled a telegram in his hand, made answer, "No. My son is coming home to spend Sunday with me. That is all."
The clerk did not know that they were tears of joy.
FIXING THAT FRESHMAN
I
Lawrence, Ninety Blank, wearily knocked four under-classmen off the walk on the way from the railway station to West College. Then, feeling better, he dragged himself up the entry stairs, threw his suit-case at the bedroom portière with a sigh of relief and himself on the divan with a sense of having done his duty.
The Glee, Banjo, and Mandolin Clubs had just returned from their Christmas holiday tour through the South. The trip had been a success both in the money and the fine impression the clubs had made, which latter would advertise the college. And that is the object of this enterprise and is too valuable for the trustees to abolish.
They had travelled in a special train of private cars lent by the parents of some of the members. They had had a very good time, because a Glee club trip is always bound to have that, and because Southern people know how to help young men in this respect about as well as any people in the world. Lawrence was glad it was over.