The great height and refined, supercilious face of another boy
towered near--Lionel Arnold, a born litterateur, and an artist--he
looked more confident than most. It seemed to the girl he felt
sure of being taken; sure that his name and position and, more
than all, his developed, finished personality must count as much
as that. And the girl knew that in the direct, unsophisticated
judgments of the judges these things did not count at all.

So she gunned over the swarm which gathered to the oak tree as
bees to a hive, able to tell often what was to happen. Even to
her young eyes all these anxious, upturned faces, watching
silently with throbbing pulses for this first vital decision
of their lives, was a stirring sight.

"I can't bear it for the ones who aren't taken," she cried out,
and the chaperon did not smile.

"I know," she said. "Each year I think I'll never come again--
it's too heart-rending. It means so much to them, and only
forty-five can go away happy. Numbers are just broken-hearted.
I don't like it--it's brutal."

"Yes, but it's an incentive to the under-classmen--it holds them
to the mark and gives them ambition, doesn't it?" the girl
argued doubtfully.

The older woman agreed. "I suppose on the whole it's a good
institution. And it's wonderful what wisdom the boys show.
Of course, they make mistakes, but on the whole they pick the