At a corner they separated.
"You're going out to Field Day on Saturday, aren't you?" Bunny asked.
Willie Trigger grinned, and nodded.
"Don't buy a ticket," the giant said, "I'll give you one; you remind me; will you?"
The small but agile heart of Willie Trigger leaped into his throat. All he could say was "Whoop!" And saying that he ran, in the very excess, the richness and the wealth, of the joy that was his. A ticket! A ticket whereby he might enter through the gate with the crowd—a part of it—a proud part of it! And all this to be granted him by Bunny himself—Bunny who was to run in the hundred yards for the Western Intercollegiate championship; he, William Watts Trigger whose father was a mere night watchman, and who for a week had been examining the fair ground fence for vulnerable points! Willie Trigger found himself, of a sudden, voiceless, too full, by far, for utterance.
Surely, one day—some day—there would come an opportunity of repaying in kind the beneficence of Bunny, Willie Trigger considered. But the beneficence was very great. Little did he realize that soon, and by the very beneficence itself was he to be put in the way of paying back his benefactor by casting light upon an unforeseen occurrence of great import, that but for him, must forever remain obscure.
As it was, Bunny had made a friend, a champion, though he knew it not.
II
In University Hall that Saturday night a man with steel-blue eyes, a white imperial and a single set of gestures, lectured on "The Reconstruction of the South." Having been an active and successful carpet-bagger twenty-five years before, he had played a part of some importance in the rehabilitation of the Southland and was qualified to speak with authority on the subject.
The immense hall was but partially filled. The lecture was very dry and very uninteresting, save when, now and again a rolling period crowded with platitudes and false metaphors, was delivered by the pompous person on the rostrum. Wilma found herself finally attempting to repeat backward the clause from the Ordinance of '37 which stared down at her from the arch of the stage.