hat there would be so many people at once that they could not
give the 21st to Class Day; Frank and his father could run Lion's Head
somehow, or, if they could not, then the opening could be postponed till
the 24th. At all events, they must not fail to come. Cynthia showed the
whole letter to his mother, who refused to think of such a thing, and
then asked, as if the fact had not been fully set before her: "When is
it to be?"

"The 21st of June."

"Well, he's early enough with his invitation," she grumbled.

"Yes, he is," said Cynthia; and she laughed for shame and pleasure as
she confessed, "I was thinking he was rather late."

She hung her head and turned her face away. But Mrs. Durgin understood.
"You be'n expectin' it all along, then."

"I guess so."

"I presume," said the elder woman, "that he's talked to you about it.
He never tells me much. I don't see why you should want to go. What's it
like?"

"Oh, I don't know. But it's the day the graduating class have to
themselves, and all their friends come."

"Well, I don't know why anybody should want to go," said Mrs. Durgin.
"I sha'n't. Tell him he won't want to own me when he sees me. What am I
goin' to wear, I should like to know? What you goin' to wear, Cynthy?"

XXVIII.

Jeff's place at Harvard had been too long fixed among the jays to allow
the hope of wholly retrieving his condition now. It was too late for
him to be chosen in any of the nicer clubs or societies, but he was not
beyond the mounting sentiment of comradery, which begins to tell in
the last year among college men, and which had its due effect with his
class. One of the men, who had always had a foible for humanity, took
advantage of the prevailing mood in another man, and wrought upon him
to ask, among the fellows he was asking to a tea at his rooms, several
fellows who were distinctly and almost typically jay. The tea was for
the aunt of the man who gave it, a very pretty woman from New York, and
it was so richly qualified by young people of fashion from Boston that
the infusion of the jay flavor could not spoil it, if it would not
rather add an agreeable piquancy. This college mood coincided that year
with a benevolent emotion in the larger world, from which fashion was
not exempt. Society had just been stirred by the reading of a certain
book, which had then a very great vogue, and several people had
been down among the wretched at the North End doing good in a
conscience-stric