“Be good, Hugo. And don’t weaken. We’ll need all your beef next year. Decided what you’re going to do yet?”

“No. Have you?”

Lefty shrugged. “I suppose I’ve got to go abroad with the family as usual. They wrote a dirty letter about the allowance I’d not have next year if I didn’t. Why don’t you come with us? Iris’ll be there.”

Hugo grinned. “No, sir! Iris once is very nice, but no man’s equal to Iris twice.” His grin became a chuckle. “And that’s a poem which you can say to Iris if you see her—and tell her I hope it makes her mad.”

Lefty’s blue eyes sparkled with appreciation. Danner was a wonderful boy. Full of wit and not dumb like most of his kind. Getting smooth, too. Be a great man. Too bad to leave him—even for the summer. “Well—so long, old man.”

Hugo watched Lefty lift his bags into a cab and roll away in the warm June dust. Then Chuck:

“Well—by-by, Hugo. See you next September.”

“Yeah. Take care of yourself.”

“No chance of your going abroad, is there? Because we sure could paint the old Avenue de l’Opéra red if you did.”

“Not this year, Chuck.”

“Well—don’t take any wooden money.”

“Don’t do anything you wouldn’t eat.”

Hugo felt a lump in his throat. He could not say any more farewells. The campus was almost deserted. No meals would be served after the next day. He stared at the vacant dormitories and listened to the waning sound of departures. A train puffed and fumed at the station. It was filled with boys. Going away. He went to his room and packed. He’d leave, too. When his suit-cases were filled, he looked round the room with damp eyes. He thought that he was going to cry, mastered himself, and then did cry. Some time later he remembered Iris and stopped crying. He walked to the station, recalling his first journey in the other direction, his pinch-backed green suit, the trunk he had carried. Grand old place, Webster. Suddenly gone dead all over. There would be a train for New York in half an hour. He took it. Some of the students talked to him on the trip to the city. Then they left him, alone, in the great vacuum of the terminal. The glittering corridors were filled with people. He wondered if he could find Bessie’s house.

At a restaurant he ate supper. When he emerged, it was dark. He asked his way, found a hotel, registered in a one-dollar room, went out on the street again. He walked to the Raven. Then he took a cab. He remembered Bessie’s house. An old woman answered the door. “Bessie? Bessie? No girl by that name I remember.”