Paul yawned loudly and shrugged his shoulders.

"Funny he should have come just when we were talking about him, wasn't
it?" Neil pursued. "What do you think of him?"

"Well, if you ask me," Paul answered, "I think he's a conceited,
stuck-up prig!"



CHAPTER IV

NEIL MAKES ACQUAINTANCES

Neil's and Paul's college life began early the next morning when,
sitting side by side in the dim, hushed chapel, they heard white-haired
Dr. Garrison ask for them divine aid and guidance. Splashes and flecks
of purple and rose and golden light rested here and there on bowed head
and shoulders or lay in shafts across the aisles. From where he sat Neil
could look through an open window out into the morning world of greenery
and sunlight. On the swaying branch of an elm that almost brushed the
casement a thrush sang sweet and clear a matin of his own. Neil made
several good resolutions that morning there in the chapel, some of which
he profited by, all of which he sincerely meant. And even Paul, far less
impressionable than his friend, looked uncommonly thoughtful all the way
back to their room, a way that led through the elm-arched nave of
College Place and across the common with its broad expanses of
sun-flecked sward and its simple granite shaft commemorating the heroes
of the civil war.