But it was a very hard thing for a man like Davis to talk to a man like Linton about a thing like this. There was something about Linton that he did not understand. He was the one man that made him self-conscious. He always felt as though Linton saw through him and understood how ambitious he was, and was laughing at him for his strenuous struggling. He told himself that he did not propose to be in awe of a lazy dilettante who thought himself a clever reader of human nature. But that did not help him to apologize. And the longer he put it off the harder it became, naturally. And the longer he put it off the more he found to dislike in Linton, which was also natural, only you would not have thought this of Davis.
After a while he began wondering how he had taken to Linton in the first place, and why the other fellows liked him so much. Every time they were together he began comparing himself with him. By most standards Davis ought to have been satisfied. Linton himself never seemed to think of comparison. He seemed to calmly take it for granted that Dougal was a wonderful man, and often referred to it as an acknowledged fact. He seemed to be glad to speak of it. But he had a way of making fellows love him that was galling to the man that led the class.
All the college bowed down to Dougal Davis; not twenty under-classmen knew who Linton was. But Timberly and Reddy Armstrong and Jack Stehman had a way of throwing an arm about lazy Linton, whom they loved, that it did not occur to them to do with the wonderful Dougal Davis, whom they admired. Davis wanted that love. He wanted everything. You see he had quite a disposition to contend with.
So he kept on having disagreeable times with himself and the conscience which would not let up. Finally he made up his mind to patch it all up on Commencement Day, and he had hit upon a plan by which he could make just amends to Linton, he told himself, and duly punish himself at the same time, and then he could graduate in peace.
Meanwhile he would have to stop thinking about that and walk down from the stage with the other Commencement speakers, for Charles Benjamin Howard had finished telling people about the Utility of Difference, and the orchestra was playing "Ta-ra-ra boom de ay."
There was an intermission of ten minutes now. After that would come the announcement of prizes and the conferring of degrees, then Smith's valedictory, followed by the benediction, and then the class would walk out into the world with their little diplomas under their arms tied with pretty ribbons.
The audience changed their positions and looked about at the other people there, whispered to each other, and went to fanning again. Some of the fathers looked at their watches and yawned and wished Commencement was over with behind their programmes, and fell to thinking about things in the office which they had come here to forget.
Other old grads. smiled kindly, and remembered how they used to do when they were in college. The young alumnus looked pityingly at the graduating class in the front rows and thought how little these boys knew about the big world he knew so much of.
Meanwhile the juniors and the lower classmen were very active and noisy in the rear of the old church. The Whig men were gathering on the left-hand side, and Clio Hall on the right. Many reinforcements were arriving that had not been near the church during the other exercises. The aisles became jammed. The seats were already so.
Suddenly a man jumped up on a pew, and screamed, "Now, fellows! Clio Hall, this way! Hip-hip!"