i Cooper to a pulp. He's a mess."

They looked at each other and burst out laughing.

"Lord," said Dodge, "I'm going to pick my freshmen next time. Who'd take
a kid with a smile like his to be a scrapper? He's got the nicest smile
in college. Why, he looks meek as a lamb."

"You never can tell," remarked Adams, rubbing his chin ruefully.

Dodge was examining his eye in the mirror. "No, you never can tell....
Damn it, I'm going to have to get a beefsteak or something for this lamp
of mine."

"Say, he ought to be a good man for the fraternity," Adams said
suddenly.

"Who?" Dodge's eye was absorbing his entire attention.

"Carver, of course. He ought to make a damn good man."

"Yeah--you bet. We've got to rush him sure."

CHAPTER VIII

The dormitory initiations had more than angered Hugh; they had
completely upset his mental equilibrium: his every ideal of college
swayed and wabbled. He wasn't a prig, but he had come to Sanford with
very definite ideas about the place, and those ideas were already groggy
from the unmerciful pounding they were receiving.

His father was responsible for his illusions, if one may call them
illusions. Mr. Carver was a shy, sensitive man well along in his
fifties, with a wife twelve years his junior. He pretended to cultivate
his small farm in Merrytown, but as a matter of fact he lived off of a
comfortable income left him by his very capable father. He spent most of
his time reading the eighteenth-century essayists, John Donne's poetry,
the "Atlantic Monthly," the "Boston Transcript," and playing Mozart on
his violin. He did not understand his wife and was thoroughly afraid of
his son; Hugh had an animal vigor that at times almost terrified him.

At his wife's insistence he had a talk with Hugh the night before the
boy left for college. Hugh had wanted to run when he met his father in
the library after dinner for that talk. He loved the gentle, gray-haired
man with the fine, delicate features and soft voice. He had often wished
that he knew his father. Mr. Carver was equally eager to know Hugh, but
he had no idea of how to go about getting acquainted with his son.

They sat on opposite sides of the fireplace, and Mr. Carver gazed
thoughtfully at the boy. Why hadn't Betty had this talk with Hugh? She
knew him so much better than he did; they were more like brother and
sister than mother and son. Why, Hugh called her Betty half the time,
and she seemed to understand him pe