I went downstairs to my mother, who was sitting in the hall by the open door.
"Father says I may go!" I said.
She got up and took me in her arms.
"My dear, I am so glad, although we shall miss you dreadfully…. Hugh?"
"Yes, mother."
"Oh, Hugh, I so want you to be a good man!"
Her cry was a little incoherent, but fraught with a meaning that came home to me, in spite of myself….
A while later I ran over to announce to the amazed Tom Peters that I was actually going to Harvard with him. He stood in the half-lighted hallway, his hands in his pockets, blinking at me.
"Hugh, you're a wonder!" he cried. "How in Jehoshaphat did you work it?"…
I lay long awake that night thinking over the momentous change so soon to come into my life, wondering exultantly what Nancy Willett would say now. I was not one, at any rate, to be despised or neglected.