and frontier days--to send her sons to college. Each son in turn had,
with her assistance, tried to get together the sum--so small, yet so
hugely large--necessary to make the start. But fate, now as sickness,
now as crop failure, now as flood, and again as war, had been too
strong for them. Hiram had come nearest, and his defeat had broken his
mother's heart and almost broken his own. It was therefore with a sense
of prying into hallowed mysteries that he began to investigate his
son's college career.

"Well, you know," Arthur proceeded to explain; "there are five
grades--A, B, C, D, and E. I aimed for C, but several things came
up--interfered--and I--just missed D."

"Is C the highest?"

Arthur smiled faintly. "Well--not in one sense. It's what's called the
gentleman's grade. All the fellows that are the right sort are in
it--or in D."

"And what did _you_ get?"

"I got E. That means I have to try again."

Hiram began to understand. So _this_ was the hallowed mystery of higher
education. He was sitting motionless, his elbows on his knees, his big
chest and shoulders inclined forward, his gaze fixed upon a wreath of red
roses in the pattern of the moquette carpet--that carpet upon which
Adelaide, backed by Arthur, had waged vain war as the worst of the many,
to cultured nerves, trying exhibitions of "primitive taste" in Ellen's
best rooms. When Hiram spoke his lips barely opened and his voice had no
expression. His next question was: "What does A mean?"

"The A men are those that keep their noses in their books. They're a
narrow set--have no ideas--think the book side is the only side of a
college education."

"Then you don't go to college to learn what's in the books?"

"Oh, of course, the books are part of it. But the real thing is
association--the friendships one makes, the knowledge of human nature and
of--of life."

"What does that mean?"

Arthur had been answering Hiram's questions in a flurry, though he had
been glib enough. He had had no fear that his father would appreciate
that he was getting half-truths, or, rather, truths prepared skillfully
for paternal consumption; his flurry had come from a sense that he was
himself not doing quite the manly, the courageous thing. Now, however,
something in the tone of the last question, or, perhaps, some element
that was lacking, roused in him a suspicion of depth in his simple
unworldly father; and swift upon this awakening came a realization that
he wa