He had not intended to go on the trip this year. He had been on the club since he was a freshman. He knew all there was to know about it, and there could be little novelty in this sort of thing for him. But that was not the reason.
Of course it was not. Harry Lawrence enjoyed travelling about the country with a rollicking lot of congenial fellows, and being made much of by old grads., and admired before the glare of foot-lights by millions of attractive girls, and dancing with them afterwards until three o'clock in the morning, like any other normal, healthy young man. It was not because he was blasé. He wasn't that sort of fool.
In the first place Lawrence had suddenly gone home, early in December, with something pronounced by a little, short doctor with mild blue eyes which saw everything to be a form of neurasthenia. This was brought on by overwork and worry and other causes. He had held a position of considerable responsibility during the football season. He had worried over it a good deal.
Although, when he reached home, he braced up with astonishing rapidity, he conceived a notion that instead of flying over the United States at the rate of ever so many miles an hour, he would like very well to sit still and yawn by the fireplace at home with slippers on.
His mother opened up the old place on Long Island for a part of every winter, and he thought he could put in a very comfortable old-fashioned vacation out there with her. He had an idea that it would do him good to take some long tramps over the meadows with a gun and a dog, and to spend whole afternoons on a horse with pure country air whistling in his ears. Perhaps, if he felt right cocky, he might borrow some pinks of his brother-in-law and ride to the hounds with his Ass-cousins on New Year's Day. And the evenings would pass pleasantly enough in fighting with Helen, his married sister, across the table, and in guying his kid brother Dick, the prep.; and then he meant to have many long after-dinner smoke-talks with his father, with whom he had recently become acquainted. It was on this last account, as much as any, that he wanted to stay at home.
But one of the second basses had the grip and another a dead grandmother, and that side of the stage was weak anyway. So Doc. Devereaux, the leader of the club, followed his two letters and three telegrams out to Compton on the Sound, and grabbed Lawrence by the coat-collar. He had brought with him a reprieve from the little blue-eyed doctor, stating that Lawrence could go if he would promise to keep on with the hot and cold baths, and to eat tremendously. Devereaux begged and pleaded, and put it on grounds of personal friendship. When he shed tears, almost, and said, "For the honor of old Nassau won't you, Harry?" Lawrence looked bored and said he would think about it. But only upon condition that Doc would stay for dinner and spend the night at Compton, which he did.
When Colonel Lawrence came out from town and had comfortably finished his dinner, and in his stately fashion had taken out a long black cigar, Harry, who had been waiting, said, "Now then, father," and told him why Devereaux was there, and asked him what to do about it.
Lawrence, Fifty Blank, knocked the ashes off, looked at Lawrence, Ninety Blank, and took three puffs of smoke. "Well, Harry," he said, "if the college needs you, there is but one way of looking at it." Lawrence, the younger, said "Yes, sir," and packed his suit-case.
Having decided to do his duty, he made up his mind that while he was about it he would enter into the spirit of the thing and have a good time. Of course this was not as satisfactory to himself as wearing a long face and telling himself what a martyr he was, but it was pleasanter for his friends.
These trips are not only good fun, they are part of one's education. They are very broadening. Lawrence wanted to be broad-minded. The only times he had travelled in his own country were with the Glee Club, and he thought every young man ought to know something of his fatherland.