approaching
luncheon pangs by a trip to the Jigger Shop, the center of social
life.

"Coming, Dink?" said the Gutter Pup.

"I--I'll be over a little later," said Stover, who did and did not
want to go.

Left alone, half angry at his own enforced aloofness, and yet desiring
solitude, Stover stood among the litter of boxes and gaping trunks and
surveyed the four bare walls that spelled for him the word home.

"It's a bully room--bully," he said to himself with a tender feeling
of possession. "The Shad's a bully fellow--bully! Dennis is a corker!
I'm going to make good; see if I don't! But I'm going slow. They've
got to come to me. I won't break in until they want me. Gee! What a
peach of a room!"

He went to the window and looked out at the whole panorama of the
school that ran beneath him, from the long, rakish lines of the Upper,
by Memorial Hall, to the chapel and the circle of Houses that ended at
the rear with the Dickinson. Below, boys were streaking across the
green depths like water-bugs over limpid surfaces, or hallooing
joyfully from window to terrace, greeting one another with bearlike
hugs, tumbling about in frolicking heaps. He was on the mountain, they
on the plain. His was the imaginative perspective and the troubled
vision of one who finds a strange city at his feet.

"It's all there," he said lamely, confused by his own impressions.
"All of it."

"Homesick?" said a thin voice behind him.

He turned to find Finnegan eyeing him uncertainly.

"Why, you wild Irishman," Dink said, surprised. "Thought you'd gone
with the crowd. Hello, what's up now?"

Finnegan, with an air of great mystery, locked the door, extracted the
key and, returning, enthroned himself on a chair which he had
previously planted defiantly on a trunk.

"That's so you can't throw me out."

"Well?"

"I'm going to be fresh as paint."

"You are?" said Stover, mystified and amused.

"Fact," said Finnegan, who, having crossed his legs, plunged his hands
into his pockets and cocked one eye, said impressively: "Dink, you're
wrong."

"I am--am I?"

"But never mind; I'm here. Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan--ready and
willing."

"Irishman, I do believe you're embarrassed," said Stover, surprised.

"I'm not," said Finnegan indignantly. "Only--only, I want to be
impressive. Dink, you're getting in wrong again."

"What in thunder----"

"You are, Dink, you are. But don't worry; I'm here. In the first
place, you can't forg