"A wonderful state, Pennsylvania. Parents' names, please."
"Charles L. Edwards. My mother isn't living."
"Tut, tut, tut!" said the school secretary regretfully and sympathetically. "A great misfortune, Edwards. Now, you are entering by certificate?"
"Yes, sir, from the Tannersville High School."
"And your age?"
"Fifteen; sixteen in——"
"Fifteen will do, thank you." He drew out a drawer in a small cabinet set at the left of the broad-topped desk and ran his fingers over the indexed cards within it, finally extracting one and laying it very exactly above the one on which he had been setting down the information supplied by Steve. For a moment he silently compared the two. Then he nodded with much satisfaction. "Quite so, quite so," he said. "You will room in Billings Hall, Number 12, Edwards. You are provided with linen and other articles required?"
"Yes, sir, but my trunk hasn't got here yet."
"Quite so. One moment." He drew a telephone toward him, pressed a button on a little black board set at one end of the desk, glanced at the clock between the two broad windows and spoke into the transmitter: "Mrs. Calder? Edwards, 12 Billings, hasn't his trunk yet. Will you have his room made up, please? Eh? Quite so! Yes, 12 Billings. Just a moment." He turned to Steve. "May I ask whether the young gentleman with you is your room-mate, Hall?"
"Yes, sir."