"I have always thought," the old professor added with a twinkle in his eyes, "that there must be many a pleasant walk in heaven—after one has left the pavement."
III
Alike as they were, there was one joy that now and then came into the old professor's life that the other could not share.
It came to him when, at widely separated intervals, there crossed his path a man with hair almost as white as his own, who in the days long gone had sat before him on the benches of the class-room as a student, and absorbed his wider wisdom. When such an one he met, the old professor's voice always caught in his throat and he sought to cover the confusion that he suffered by a closer pressure of his hand. Then, the emotion passing, something of the old light would flame up in his eyes.
He would step back and exclaim: "Well! well! well!" Then the memories would surge back into his mind and he would gaze abstractedly without speaking.
"You remember me?" the other old fellow would ask, gaily.
"Remember you!" the old professor would exclaim and nudge him, playfully. "Remember you? Well, well, I guess I couldn't forget you if I tried! Why you were the scamp that tied the white mule to my desk-leg and left him there over night so I should be greeted by his bray when I entered the room in the morning! Remember you! Ha! ha! I've been waiting all these years to get at you!"
Then he would stride upon the white haired "grad" with hand raised, ominously, but with the merry twinkle still lighting up his eyes; whilst the victim would quail mockingly, with a brighter twinkle in his own.
The old professor was known often to have kissed gray haired boys when they met on alumni day.
"I have always called you the mule-pupil," he would continue as, arm in arm they strolled back and forth along the broad main corridor.