8

_COPE UNDERTAKES AN EXCURSION_


Two or three days later, Randolph met Medora Phillips in front of the bank.
This was a neat and solemn little edifice opposite the elms and the
fountain; it was neighbored by dry-goods stores, the offices of renting
agencies, and the restaurants where the unfraternized undergraduates took
their daily chances. Through its door passed tradesmen's clerks with
deposits, and young housewives with babies in perambulators, and students
with their small financial problems, and members of the faculty about to
cash large or small checks. Mrs. Phillips had come across from the dry-
goods store to pick up her monthly sheaf of vouchers,--it was the third of
October.

"Don't you want to come in for a minute?" she asked Randolph. "Then you can
walk on with me to the stationer's. Carolyn tells me that our last batch of
invitations reduced us to nothing. How did _your_ dinner go?"

Randolph followed her into the cool marble interior. "Oh, in town, you
mean? Quite well, I think. I'm sure my young man took a good honest
appetite with him!"

"I know. We don't do half enough for these poor boys."

"Yes, he rose to the food. But not to the drinks. I took him, after all, to
my club. I innocently suggested cocktails; but, no. He declined--in a deft
but straightforward way. Country principles. Small-town morals. He made me
feel like a--well, like a corrupter of youth."