“You have very comfortable quarters here,” he said. “I like these old-fashioned rooms with the overhead beams and the deep-set windows. They’re so quiet and restful and homelike. Some of the new dormitories are wonders, but I doubt if shower-baths and swimming-tanks and reading-rooms and all the rest of the modern conveniences quite make up for the atmosphere that you miss.”
“I’d like to see some of those places you speak of,” said Phillip. “I reckon they must be mighty fine.”
“They are. Some evening we’ll go around and call on some sybarites of my acquaintance in Westmorley and Claverly. There’s Pete Broom, for instance; he and another chap have three rooms and a bath, with hot water heat and telephone service and porcelain tubs and Heaven only knows what else! It’s all very beautiful and stupendous, but the idea of wearing ordinary clothes and smoking a pipe there is absolutely incongruous. Why, they ought to drape themselves in purple and gold and fine linen and sit all day on silken cushions. No, something of this sort suits me better. I like a room where the paint’s scraped off in places and where the window catches don’t always catch and where you feel that some one has lived before you and gone through what you’re going through. But then it’s all a matter of taste, of course.”
“I reckon so,” answered Phillip. “I tried to get rooms in the house where my father lived when he was here, but they were all taken. So I came here. I like this very much so far.”
“So your father was a Harvard man?” asked John.
“Yes; class of ’67. He left college when the war broke out and served in the army—the Southern army, you know.” John nodded. “Then after it was over he came back and finished college. He married three days after he graduated, but his wife died less than a year later. And he didn’t marry again until he was nearly forty. Mamma says Margey and I came mighty near not being born, because she refused my father three times before she finally gave in.”
“Your father was persevering,” laughed John. “Margey is your sister? Have you any brothers?”
“No, there’s just Margey and me. Margey is two years older than I.”
“And how old are you?”
“Nineteen last June. I—I reckon you’re a good deal more than that?”