suppose--But of course!" he arrested himself in the superfluous
reassurance he was offering, "All that goes without saying. Only there
are some of the fellows coming back to the law school, and if you'll
allow me--"

"We shall be very happy indeed, Mr. Mavering," said Mrs. Pasmer, behind
him.

"Oh, thank you ever so much, Mrs. Pasmer." This was occasion for another
burst of laughter with him. He seemed filled with the intoxication of
youth, whose spirit was in the bright air of the day and radiant in the
young faces everywhere. The paths intersecting one another between the
different dormitories under the drooping elms were thronged with people
coming and going in pairs and groups; and the academic fete, the
prettiest flower of our tough old Puritan stem, had that charm, at once
sylvan and elegant, which enraptures in the pictured fables of the
Renaissance. It falls at that moment of the year when the old university
town, often so commonplace and sometimes so ugly, becomes briefly and
almost pathetically beautiful under the leafage of her hovering elms and
in, the perfume of her syringas, and bathed in this joyful tide of youth
that overflows her heart. She seems fit then to be the home of the poets
who have loved her and sung her, and the regret of any friend of the
humanities who has left her.

"Alice," said Mrs. Pasmer, leaning forward a little to speak to her
daughter, and ignoring a remark of the Professor's, "did you ever see so
many pretty costumes?"

"Never," said the girl, with equal intensity.