s a lean stooped man,
very distinguished. There was a bulky man in a dinner coat, with a
semi-circle of mustache, and eyes that even at a distance seemed to give
impatient orders. He would be a big banker, or a lumberman.

It was the easy friendliness of all of them that most made Milt feel
like an outsider. If a servant had come out and ordered him away, he
would have gone meekly ... he fancied.

He straggled off, too solidly unhappy to think how unhappy he was. In
his clammy room he picked up the algebra. For a quarter-hour he could
not gather enough vigor to open it. In his lassitude, his elbows felt
feeble, his fingers were ready to drop off. He slowly scratched the book
open----

At one o'clock he was reading algebra, his face still and grim. But
already it seemed less heartily brick-red.

He listlessly telephoned to Claire, in the morning.

"Hello? Oh! Miss Boltwood? This is Milt Daggett."

"Oh! Oh, how are you?"

"Why, why I'm--I've got settled. I can get into the engineering school
all right."

"I'm glad."

"Uh, enjoying Seattle?"

"Oh! Oh yes. The mountains---- Do you like it?"

"Oh! Oh yes. Sea and all---- Great town."

"Uh, w-when are we going to see you? Daddy had to go East, left you his
regards. W-when----?"

"Why--why I suppose you're awful--awfully busy, meeting people and
all----"

"Yes, I am, rather, but----" Her hedging uncomfortable tone changed to a
cry of distress. "Milt! I must see you. Come up at four this afternoon."

"Yes!"

He rushed to a small, hot tailor-shop. He panted "Press m' suit while I
wait?" They gave him a pair of temporary trousers, an undesirable pair
of trousers belonging to a short fat man with no taste in fabrics, and
with these flapping about his lean legs, he sat behind a calico curtain,
reading _The War Cry_ and looking at a "fashion-plate" depicting nine
gentlemen yachtsmen each nine feet tall, while the Jugoslav in charge
unfeelingly sprinkled and ironed and patted his suit.

He spent ten minutes in blacking his shoes, in his room--and twenty
minutes in getting the blacking off his fingers.

He was walking through the gate in the Gilson hedge at one minute to
four.

But he had reached Queen Anne Hill at three. For an hour he had walked
the crest road, staring at the steamers below, alternately gripping his
hands with desire of Claire, and timorously finally deciding that he
wouldn't go to her house--wouldn't ever see her again.

He came into the