“Oh, come on; we’ll get seats together.”
But they didn’t, and so, for a time, Phillip lost sight of the other. But during the next half-hour his thoughts were busy with him. It did not seem extraordinary to him that the blue-eyed youth should have made overtures of friendship as he had. In Virginia one spoke to strangers on the road, and common courtesy demanded a certain disregard of conventionalities. Later, however, when Phillip had seen more of college life and customs, he marveled greatly. Now he wondered what the white E embroidered on the other’s crimson cap meant, and resolved to purchase a cap just like it at once. Also, the stunning shirt of white and green and pink stripes worn by his new acquaintance made him dissatisfied with his own stiff-bosomed affair; and he acknowledged the superiority, from the standpoint of picturesqueness, of knickerbockers and golf stockings over long trousers. He wondered how much such articles of apparel cost and what would be left to him of his present capital after he had made such purchases as now seemed necessary.
He found the crimson cap waiting for him on the steps when he filed out and he ranged his own straw hat beside it. Together the two made their way past University to the farther end of Thayer. Here Phillip was guided into a corner study on the first floor.
On the door a clean, new card was tacked and Phillip read the inscription as he passed:
“Mr. Chester M. Baker.”
He made a mental note to order some like it and throw away those he had, on which his name was engraved in a flowing script which he had heretofore thought very beautiful, but which he now surmised to be sadly out of style.
The study in which Phillip found himself was homelike and well furnished, but in no way remarkable. The pictures were few and good; the rugs and upholsterings were bright and aggressively new; only the cushions in the window-seat and the half-hundred books showed the dignity of usage. But Phillip thought it a very nice room, with its view of greensward and swaying branches through the open windows, and regretted that he had not secured quarters in the Yard. His host tossed the crimson cap onto the table.
“Sit down,” he said. “By the way, you haven’t any recitation for this hour, have you?”
Phillip shook his head, and his host went on: