"What's the trouble with him? He ought to have been here yesterday or
the day before."

"I'm afraid Peter John never'll be on time. He doesn't seem to have
taken that in his course. He'd never pass an 'exam' in punctuality."

"What does he want?"

"The poor chap begs us to meet him at the station."

"What train?"

"The two-seventeen."

"Then we've no time to waste. Is he afraid he'll be lost?"

"He's afraid, all right."

"What's he afraid of?"

"Everything and everybody, I guess. Poor chap."

Will Phelps laughed good-naturedly as he spoke, and it was evident that
his sympathy for "Peter John" was genuine. His friend and room-mate,
Foster Bennett, was as sympathetic as he, though his manner was more
quiet and his words were fewer; their fears for their friend were
evidently based upon their own personal knowledge.

For four years the three young men had been classmates in the Sterling
High School, and in the preceding June had graduated from its course of
study, and all three had decided to enter Winthrop College. The entrance
examinations had been successfully passed, and at the time when this
story opens all had been duly registered as students in the incoming
class of the college.

Foster Bennett and Will Phelps were to be room-mates, and for several
days previous to the September day on which the conversation already
recorded had taken place they had been in the little college town,
arranging their various belongings in the room in Perry Hall, one of the
best of all the dormitory buildings. The first assembling of the college
students was to occur on the morrow, and then the real life upon which
they were about to enter was to begin.

The two boys had come to Winthrop together, the parents of both having
decided that it was better to throw the young students at once upon
their own resources rather than to accompany them, reserving their
visits for a later time when the first novelty of the new life would be
gone.

And on this September day the novelty certainly was the most prominent
element in the thoughts of both boys. The task of arranging their
various belongings in their new rooms had kept both so busy that
thoughts of the homes they had left were of necessity somewhat rare, and
the vision of the family life in which they had been so vital a part had
not as yet come to take the place in their minds which it soon would
occupy.

At the hotel where they had been staying there were many other