elderly men. "I'm afraid you're tired," she said to the girl.

"Oh no."

"Of course not, on Class Day. But I hope we shall get seats. What
weather!"

The sun had not been oppressive at any time during the day, though the
crowded building had been close and warm, and now it lay like a painted
light on the grass and paths over which they passed to the entrance of
the grounds around the Tree. Holden Chapel, which enclosed the space on
the right as they went in, shed back the sun from its brick-red flank,
rising unrelieved in its venerable ugliness by any touch of the festive
preparations; but to their left and diagonally across from them high
stagings supported tiers of seats along the equally unlovely red bulks of
Hollis and of Harvard. These seats, and the windows in the stories above
them, were densely packed with people, mostly young girls dressed in a
thousand enchanting shades and colours, and bonneted and hatted to the
last effect of fashion. They were like vast terraces of flowers to the
swift glance, and here and there some brilliant parasol, spread to catch
the sun on the higher ranks, was like a flaunting poppy, rising to the
light and lolling out above the blooms of lower stature. But the parasols
were few, for the two halls flung wide curtains of shade over the greater
part of the spectators, and across to the foot of the chapel, while a
piece of the carpentry whose simplicity seems part of the Class Day
tradition shut out the glare and the uninvited public, striving to
penetrate the enclosure next the street. In front of this yellow pine
wall; with its ranks of benches, stood the Class Day Tree, girded at ten
or fifteen feet from the ground with a wide band of flowers.