"I mean Mother, of course," was the reply, followed by a sharp prick of conscience. "She is coming up by sea, she is on the way now. The other letter was from a—from a friend. She is to be here, too."
"You ought to meet her in New York—your mother, of course. She is first in your thoughts, I am sure," advised the Stroke, with a perceptible shade of disbelief. "Just let her see that you are sound and lusty, that's what she will care most about. She will be sorry for your sake, not for her own."
Throwing himself across his cot, Hastings looked out of the nearest window, down the river to where the flag above the Harvard Quarters slashed the sky like a ribbon of flame. There were the enemy whom he had helped to defeat, and now it seemed an honorable thing, greatly to be desired, even to row on a beaten crew. The tousled head went to the pillow, and he could no longer help pouring out his heart to his friend:
"Nothing can make it any worse than it is. I have worked every summer so far, and I was going to have a real vacation this year, the first since I have been in college. Now I can't bear to think of any good times, with disgrace hanging over me. I am going to apply for my summer job again, but I've been working in the office of a Yale man, and I am afraid he won't want to have a slob around him who was kicked off the crew four days before the race, will he? Of course he won't. The last month has been simply hell. Mother has been living in the thought of this trip just to see me row against Harvard, and—and there is a girl—well, I am a big, whining, useless baby, that's all."
The Stroke was an older man by five years, who had known a man's stress and sorrows before his college days began. Had he been a man of readier speech, he would have tried somehow to make the sorrowing boy realize that there were other worlds to conquer, wider and more inspiring fields in the years beyond. Yet there was something quite fine in this absorption in the crew; it was what one ought to feel at twenty-one, and it might be better for him to fight it out alone. The Stroke was glad when the youngster marched out of the room without more words. "I hope he stands the gaff," thought the elder man.
Hastings' first impulse had been to flee the place, and he was still busy with the longing to be anywhere away from the sights and sounds that racked him because they were so infinitely much to him. While he struggled with the decision, the eight began to make ready for the long afternoon practice. As the shell swung out of sight around the curve of the shore, Hastings had not believed it possible that any one could feel as lonely and neglected as he at that moment. Just then he saw a University substitute standing idly in the boathouse door, and he remembered that with one transferred to the eight, and another laid off with a cold, this youngster, Bates, was the sole survivor of the trio which had its own thankless duties and burdens. The intending fugitive made a choice then and there, as he slid down the bank, shouting:
"Aren't you going out to-day to keep tabs on the Red-Heads?"
The solitary substitute ruefully shook his head:
"No, I haven't any one to man the pair-oar with me, and I'm no good in a single shell. And I ought to be over at the start right now, for the tip is out that Harvard is going to try the four miles on time, their last attempt. How am I going to catch their time, I want to know, with nobody to help me?"
Hastings laid hold of the bow of the pair-oared boat as he said: