The oddest thing about the adventure was the transformation of Upton. Vance would have imagined Upton to be almost as unfitted as his sister for such a test of nerve and muscle; but the timorous youth of Paul's Landing developed, with the donning of his Sunday clothes, an unforeseen audacity and composure. The fact that Vance didn't know the ropes seemed to give Upton a sense of superiority; he said at intervals: "Come right along; stick to me; don't let 'em put it over on you," in a tone of almost patronizing reassurance. And when they joined Bunty Hayes, who was one of the free spirits of Paul's Landing, Vance was struck by the intimacy of his greeting of Upton, and by the "Hullo, Uppy boy"—"Say, that the Tracy kid?" of his companions. It was evident that Upton had already acquired the art of the double life, and that the sheepish boy who went about his job at the Paul's Landing nursery, and clumped home for supper with mud and manure on his boots, was the pale shade of the real Upton, a dashing blade with his straw hat too far back on his pale blond hair, and a fraternity ribbon suddenly budding in his buttonhole. "Wonder if Laura Lou knows?" Vance speculated, and concluded that she did, and that brother and sister carried on their own lives under Mrs. Tracy's unsuspecting eye. He was rather sorry now that they hadn't brought Laura Lou after all; it would have been curious to see her blossom out like her brother. But Vance soon forgot her in the exhilaration of watching the game. It was his first holiday for months; for the dull business of convalescence had nothing to do with holiday-making. The noise and excitement about him were contagious, and he cheered and yelled with the rest, exchanged jokes with Bunty Hayes and his friends, and felt himself saturated with the vigour of all the young and vigorous life about him. But when the game was over, and the crowd began to scatter, the vitality seemed to ebb out of him as the spectators ebbed out of the stadium. It was still very hot; he had shouted himself hoarse; they had ahead of them the struggle at the station, the struggle to get into a train, the stifling journey home—and Vance began to feel that he was still a convalescent, with no reserves of strength. At Euphoria, after a ball game, a dozen people would have been ready to give him a lift home; but here he knew no one, Upton seemed to have no acquaintances but Bunty Hayes and his crowd, and Paul's Landing, where they all came from, was a long way off.

"See here—you look sick," said Bunty Hayes, touching him on the shoulder.

Vance flushed up. "Sick? I'm hot and thirsty, that's all." He wasn't going to have any of that lot of Upton's treating him like a sissy.