Just then Mercer, the treasurer, came in with his rattling tin-box, and talked business with Tucker, who nodded his head and kept on opening and glancing through letters.
Symington tried not to listen, but he couldn't help hearing, so he got up again and went to the window. A great lot of racket was going on in the quadrangle below. Somebody had thrown some water out of a window at somebody else, and now they were trying to throw stones back without breaking glass, which was hard to do. Everyone was shouting or yelling, or both, and it was echoing from Old North and College Offices. This is called Horse.
It interrupted Tucker so that he had to raise his voice and repeat several times what he said to Mercer. Finally the voices became louder than he liked. Stepping across the room in a matter-of-fact way with an open letter in his other hand, he threw down the window from the top, with a shrill squeak, and said, in a casual tone, "Ah, I'm afraid you'll have to be just a little bit more quiet down there. You're getting a trifle too noisy. There, that's better," and went on with his sentence to Mercer, who answered, "That's so. Shall I wire him about it?" The racket had suddenly subsided.
Symington the prep. sat down and looked at Tucker. But the senior changed his expression no more than when he knocked the ashes out of his pipe. Charles asked no questions because he was not that kind of a prep., but he arose, went to the window again and looked at the horse-players. Then he looked at Tucker once more. Most of them were bigger than Tucker.
They acted as if nothing unusual had taken place. They were laughing now at something else, only it was quiet laughter. They were under-classmen.
The two athletic officers were busy now, the president talking very rapidly and seriously, and the treasurer listening intently. Symington, the prep., gazed out of the window as only preps. can gaze. He found it interesting enough.
It was that hour of the day when the undergraduate leaves whatever has been occupying his attention, and thrusts his hands deep into his pockets, and heads for the spot in town where he feels like going three times every day. There were dozens of them in sight doing it now.
The prep. thought it odd, the way some of them stood still out in the middle of the campus, and with their eyes turned toward an upper story of one of the buildings yelled, "Hello-o, Sam, going down to grub?" or beseechingly, "Please shake it up," or commandingly, "Get a move up there!" He liked it though.
He could hear footsteps rumbling down the entry stairs, then the door slam, and then the man himself would emerge in sight. He saw them coming out of North, too, and from West, and he could make out others, way over by East College. Many of them headed toward Nassau Street. Some set out in the direction of the Chapel. Others turned toward the Gymnasium. Nearly all of them whistled or made a noise of some sort as they went along.
One fellow, a tremendous man, was stalking by with his head thrown back, singing at the top of his voice. But the funny part of it to Symington was that the big fellow's face seemed utterly unconscious of whether any one was around to see him or not. He was all alone, and he seemed to be having a quiet, comfortable time of it.