“You wouldn’t let us give you a real red celebration,” Selden explained, as they stood on the platform, waiting. “It was fittinger that a crew captain should be officially blowed to a party, and that dinner wasn’t much—just a snack. But we done what we could—I done my durndest,” he finished modestly. And Dick Elliot’s scornful “Huh!” came out of darkness.
“Did we give you the time of your life? Do you like us?” Jimmy investigated further, and Trefethen laid a hand on his arm.
“You’ve given me the best time I’ve had in twenty-five years,” he said. “And I like you a lot.”
“Well, we like you; you’re the right sort,” Van Arden’s quick tones threw back frankly, and with that Pearly broke easily, sweetly, into
He’s a jolly good fellow
As nobody can deny.
And the others chorused it with ringing notes. And as the train moved slowly out—Trefethen standing on the platform, watching his friends with intent eyes, with a new sense of loneliness—Pearly Gates’s thrilling, clear music rose again in “Bright College Years,” the other voices instantly lifting to his.
The seasons come, the seasons go;
The earth is green or white with snow;
But time and change shall naught avail