Moore was born on a farm and his parents dying just as he finished the common schools, he had worked his way through college, doing chores during the school terms and spending his vacations on farms wherever employment offered. In like fashion he was now plodding his way through the law school. His good humor was unfailing and his drolleries were much quoted in the university town. When urged in his undergraduate days to take up football he pleaded important engagements, not scrupling to explain that they were the most solemn pledges to saw wood or cut grass for his clients or drive the truck on Saturdays for a grocer. He called his employers his noble patrons and praised them for their consideration and generosity. He enjoyed music, and possessing a good baritone voice he had been enrolled in the glee club. He never had danced until, in his senior year, a number of co-eds conspired to instruct him. He was the star performer of the debating society and had several times represented the university in the contests of the Inter-State Association.
Though she had so quickly overcome her disappointment at leaving the University, Grace found that the sight of Moore awoke in her a keen regret that her college days were over. She was far less sure of herself than she had been before her evening at The Shack. She clutched at memories of her happy care-free yesterdays. A band in the street was playing the air of the college song, which was punctuated by the familiar yell from the throats of a mighty phalanx of undergraduates. Young women from all the state colleges were coming into the store for hurried purchases. Two members of her sorority, girls she had lived with for two years, dropped in to see her—cheery, hopeful young women, eagerly flinging at her scraps of college news and giving a sharper edge to her homesickness for the campus and all it connoted. She was beset with serious doubts as to her fitness to meet the problems of life; the conceit was gone out of her. She recalled what a lecturer had once said at a student’s convocation, that the great commonwealth of Indiana stood behind them, eager to serve them, to put them in the way of realizing the abundant promise of life. In her mood of contrition she reflected that not only had the arm of the State been withdrawn, but that she had gone far toward estranging those to whom she was bound by the closest ties, who had every right to expect the best of her. If it had been in her power she would have elected to join the throng of young men and women who, victor or vanquished, would go back to the university that night singing songs which echoed in her memory now and made a continuing little ache in her heart.
Moore’s pride in her was manifest as he hung to a strap and bent over her in the crowded street-car on the way to the battlefield. Grace was a pretty girl, and John was not unmindful of the fact that she attracted attention. He talked steadily—of university affairs, of their friends among the students.
“Did Roy come up?” she asked.
“I haven’t seen him. He may have come up with the bunch this morning. But you might overlook the king of England in this crowd.”
“Roy’s not terribly enthusiastic about the law,” she suggested leadingly.
“Well, maybe not just what you’ll call crazy about it; but he’ll come along all right. There’s good stuff in Roy.”
Moore was usually so candid that his equivocal answer did not escape her. Grace had the greatest misgivings as to her brother’s future. He had wanted to leave the university when she was summoned home. He had won his A. B. by the narrowest margin and had gone into the law school only because of his mother’s obsession that he was destined to a career similar to that of her father and grandfather, whose attainments at the bar and services to the State provided what Mrs. Durland called a background for her children.
IV
Arriving early at the ball park they found their seats and John continued talking as the crowd assembled. On many Sunday afternoons they had taken long tramps, discussing all manner of things. Moore was a prodigious reader of poetry and made it his practice to commit to memory a certain number of lines every day. Politics, too, interested him seriously. He always spoke with deepest reverence of the founders of the republic, referring to them familiarly as though they were still living. Between the cheers to which he vociferously contributed his own voice, he rambled on comfortably and happily, satisfied that he had a sympathetic auditor.