FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   >>  
home, or down to the University, and he--to the troopship, and the high seas, and after that no telling. The strap of his knapsack hurt him. They said that Manila was a furnace. He wished that the women would stop loading them with flowers; he wished that Pellams and the other fellows wouldn't keep running out to march beside him; didn't they know how hard he was trying to hold it back? And what did this going amount to, anyway? If he had staid out, there would have been only one gap in the company. Then, in a rest, Pellams got to his side with a bottle of ice-cold Pilsener and Tom pointed its base to the sky and gained courage. There was a falling apart to his right, and he felt rather than saw that his mother had slipped through the crowd and taken his hand in her slim, white one, was marching beside him over the cruel cobble-stones; Pellams, too, closed up on the other side, for the officers were not trying to keep the alignment as they drew near the end. These three went on together, she trying to be brave now that the last had come, Pellams clumping along over the rough pavement and joking in ecstatic disregard of the discomfort of his fat body. It was over at last, the mounted police were pushing back the crowd; it was to be all alone now. The Stanford men gave their yell together, the volunteer held his mother close for a moment. Then,--"Company, attention!"--the dock faded into mist, so that he stumbled on the gangway. Not until that night, when a group of them paced along the wharf, had anyone spoken of Class Day. Cap Smith had started it. "They are going to the Ball now," said he. "I wonder if Lyman came out ahead on the Show," said Marion, his eye on the dollar, even at that solemn moment. "I wonder if the programs got down in time," said Tom, and then he laughed to think of himself, the chairman of the Ball committee, plodding along the splintered dock in a dusty uniform and buff leggings and with the rudiments of a scraggly beard on his face. It was a queer ending. Down there, the others were floating round, now, to high-priced music from town. In a little note which Pellams had brought him from Her that morning, she had said that she was to wear a small silk flag instead of flowers this time. He would have liked to peep in, as he used to from the gym roof when he was a Freshie, to see if she had really done it. During these wharf-edge musings, taps had blown, bringing the men on board again.
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   >>  



Top keywords:
Pellams
 

mother

 

moment

 

flowers

 

wished

 
spoken
 
During
 

started

 
Freshie
 

bringing


attention

 

Company

 
musings
 

stumbled

 
gangway
 

dollar

 
floating
 
priced
 

volunteer

 

ending


brought

 

morning

 

programs

 

laughed

 

solemn

 

Marion

 

chairman

 

leggings

 

rudiments

 

scraggly


uniform

 
committee
 

plodding

 

splintered

 

company

 
amount
 

bottle

 
gained
 

courage

 
Pilsener

pointed
 

telling

 
knapsack
 
University
 

troopship

 

Manila

 
furnace
 

running

 
wouldn
 

loading