tairs and blundered out into the rainy night in a towering rage
at Katharine, at Smith, most of all at himself for being a certain
Thing.

Jimmy Mason had not attended the Roble dance. Instead, he sat at his
table in the Knockery, going over his accounts as laundry agent. He was
deep in these end-of-semester figures when Pellams burst in at the
window, like a storm-driven creature. People never stand on ceremony at
the Knockery. It is the corner room on the ground floor. The place has
always been the Knockery ever since Mason roomed there, just as the big
room over the old dining-hall will be the "Bull-pen" forever. It is the
universal avenue after the lights are out, and the doors locked. You
open the window as gently as you can and slide in. If the tenants are in
bed, you get through into the hall on tiptoe, if possible; if awake, you
stop and chat a bit by the way of courtesy; no one ever has to study in
this enchanted bower. Moreover, if you do not live in the Hall, if you
are an Alumnus visitor from town, if there are girls at your frat-house,
or if you dwell off the campus and are belated, there are extra blankets
under the lounge in the corner. Make up your own bed and turn in,
without waking the sleepers. You are not crowding anybody. Once a whole
baseball team, with the help of two extra mattresses, slept comfortably
in the Knockery--but that is history.

When Pellams slammed in and flopped disconsolately into a chair, Mason
looked up, knowing that there was trouble somewhere.

"What is it?" he asked. No answer. Jimmy rose, locked the door and
closed the ventilator. Then he disposed himself on the lounge.

"Tell your dad. Is it the girl?"

Pellams's affirmative was put in language unrepeatable in a book for
young persons.

"Something gone wrong?"

"Yes," _etc._

Jimmy wished to offer consolation. "Can I do anything?"

"Yes," growled the man in a dress suit. "You can give me a sweater and
take me to Mayfield!"

Now Jimmy was a true friend. He would have gone anywhere for Pellams.

When the dance music at Roble had ceased, and the quiet of the December
night was broken by only the patter of raindrops and the sound of
singing in the Mayfield distance, punctuated by sharp whoops, Jimmy had
got Pellams back to the Knockery pretty well consoled. It might not have
made much difference just then, even if the lover could have known that
over in darkened Roble, Katharine Graham, who did not approve of love