Mrs. Pasmer and her friends found themselves so late that if some
gentlemen who knew Professor Saintsbury had not given up their places
they could have got no seats. But this happened, and the three ladies had
harmoniously blended their hues with those of the others in that bank of
bloom, and the gentlemen had somehow made away with their obstructiveness
in different crouching and stooping postures at their feet, when the
Junior Class filed into the green enclosure amidst the 'rahs of their
friends; and sank in long ranks on the grass beside the chapel. Then the
Sophomores appeared, and were received with cheers by the Juniors, with
whom they joined, as soon as they were placed, in heaping ignominy upon
the freshmen. The Seniors came last, grotesque in the variety of their
old clothes, and a fierce uproar of 'rahs and yells met them from the
students squatted upon the grass as they loosely grouped themselves in
front of the Tree; the men of the younger classes formed in three rings,
and began circling in different directions around them.

Mrs. Pasmer bent across Mrs. Saintsbury to her daughter: "Can you make
out Mr. Mavering among them, Alice?"

"No. Hush, mamma!" pleaded the girl.

With the subsidence of the tumult in the other classes, the Seniors had
broken from the stoical silence they kept through it, and were now with
an equally serious clamour applauding the first of a long list of
personages, beginning with the President, and ranging through their
favourites in the Faculty down to Billy the Postman. The leader who
invited them to this expression of good feeling exacted the full tale of
nine cheers for each person he named, and before he reached the last the
'rahs came in gasps from their dry throats.