"

"Why not? I've got a class at eleven-thirty."

"You damned gloom! Of course, if you don't want to go to the coast--"

With a bound Amory was out of bed, scattering the bureau cover's burden
on the floor. The coast... he hadn't seen it for years, since he and his
mother were on their pilgrimage.

"Who's going?" he demanded as he wriggled into his B. V. D.'s.

"Oh, Dick Humbird and Kerry Holiday and Jesse Ferrenby and--oh about
five or six. Speed it up, kid!"

In ten minutes Amory was devouring cornflakes in Renwick's, and at
nine-thirty they bowled happily out of town, headed for the sands of
Deal Beach.

"You see," said Kerry, "the car belongs down there. In fact, it was
stolen from Asbury Park by persons unknown, who deserted it in Princeton
and left for the West. Heartless Humbird here got permission from the
city council to deliver it."

"Anybody got any money?" suggested Ferrenby, turning around from the
front seat.

There was an emphatic negative chorus.

"That makes it interesting."

"Money--what's money? We can sell the car."

"Charge him salvage or something."

"How're we going to get food?" asked Amory.

"Honestly," answered Kerry, eying him reprovingly, "do you doubt Kerry's
ability for three short days? Some people have lived on nothing for
years at a time. Read the Boy Scout Monthly."

"Three days," Amory mused, "and I've got classes."

"One of the days is the Sabbath."

"Just the same, I can only cut six more classes, with over a month and a
half to go."

"Throw him out!"

"It's a long walk back."

"Amory, you're running it out, if I may coin a new phrase."

"Hadn't you better get some dope on yourself, Amory?"

Amory subsided resignedly and drooped into a contemplation of the
scenery. Swinburne seemed to fit in somehow.

"Oh, winter's rains and ruins are over,
And all the seasons of snows and sins;
The days dividing lover and lover,
The light that loses, the night that wins;
And time remembered is grief forgotten,
And frosts are slain and flowers begotten,
And in green underwood and cover,
Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

"The full streams feed on flower of--"

"What's the matter, Amory? Amory's thinking about poetry, about the
pretty birds and flowers. I can see it in his eye."

"No, I'm not," he lied. "I'm thinking about the Princetonian. I ought to
make up to-night; but I can telephone back, I suppose."

"Oh,"