find his room in Surrey Hall. He wondered how he would like his
room-mate, Peters.... What's his name? Oh, yes, Carl.... The registrar
had written that Peters had gone to Kane School.... Must be pretty fine.
Ought to be first-class to room with.... Hugh hoped that Peters wouldn't
think that he was too country....

Hugh was a slender lad who looked considerably less than his eighteen
years. A gray cap concealed his sandy brown hair, which he parted on the
side and which curled despite all his brushing. His crystalline blue
eyes, his small, neatly carved nose, his sensitive mouth that hid a shy
and appealing smile, were all very boyish. He seemed young, almost
pathetically young.

People invariably called him a nice boy, and he didn't like it; in fact,
he wanted to know how they got that way. They gave him the pip, that's
what they did. He guessed that a fellow who could run the hundred in 10:
2 and out-box anybody in high school wasn't such a baby. Why, he had
overheard one of the old maid teachers call him sweet. Sweet! Cripes,
that old hen made him sick. She was always pawing him and sticking her
skinny hands in his hair. He was darn glad to get to college where there
were only men teachers.

Women always wanted to get their hands into his hair, and boys liked him
on sight. Many of those who were streaming up the hill before and behind
him, who passed him or whom he passed, glanced at his eager face and
thought that there was a guy they'd like to know.

An experienced observer would have divided those boys into three groups:
preparatory school boys, carelessly at ease, well dressed, or, as the
college argot has it, "smooth"; boys from city schools, not so well
dressed perhaps, certainly not so sure of themselves; and country boys,
many of them miserably confused and some of them clad in Kollege Kut
Klothes that they would shamefacedly discard within a week.

Hugh finally reached the top of the hill, and the campus was before him.
He had visited the college once with his father and knew his way about.
Eager as he was to reach Surrey Hall, he paused to admire the
pseudo-Gothic chapel. He felt a little thrill of pride as he stared in
awe at the magnificent building. It had been willed to the college by an
alumnus who had made millions selling rotten pork.

Hugh skirted two of the factory laboratories, hurried between the Doric
temple and Byzantine mosque, paused five times to direct confused
classmates, passed a dul