ing
what there was for dinner, and she ran about like an excited
little hen, chuckling and cackling. Claude wondered whether
working-men were as nice as that to old women the world over. He
didn't believe so. He liked to think that such geniality was
common only in what he broadly called "the West." He bought a big
cigar, and strolled up and down the platform, enjoying the fresh
air until the passenger whistled in.

After his freight train got under steam he did not open his books
again, but sat looking out at the grey homesteads as they
unrolled before him, with their stripped, dry cornfields, and the
great ploughed stretches where the winter wheat was asleep. A
starry sprinkling of snow lay like hoar-frost along the crumbly
ridges between the furrows.

Claude believed he knew almost every farm between Frankfort and
Lincoln, he had made the journey so often, on fast trains and
slow. He went home for all the holidays, and had been again and
again called back on various pretexts; when his mother was sick,
when Ralph overturned the car and broke his shoulder, when his
father was kicked by a vicious stallion. It was not a Wheeler
custom to employ a nurse; if any one in the household was ill, it
was understood that some member of the family would act in that
capacity.

Claude was reflecting upon the fact that he had never gone home
before in such good spirits. Two fortunate things had happened to
him since he went over this road three months ago.

As soon as he reached Lincoln in September, he had matriculated
at the State University for special work in European History. The
year before he had heard the head of the department lecture for
some charity, and resolved that even if he were not allowed to
change his college, he would manage to study under that man. The
course Claude selected was one upon which a student could put as
much time as he chose. It was based upon the reading of
historical sources, and the Professor was notoriously greedy for
full notebooks. Claude's were of the fullest. He worked early and
late at the University Library, often got his supper in town and
went back to read until closing hour. For the first time he was
studying a subject which seemed to him vital, which had to do
with events and ideas, instead of with lexicons and grammars. How
often he had wished for Ernest during the lectures! He could see
Ernest drinking them up, agreeing or dissenting in his
independent way. The class was very