ellows and during all his life was
thrown in their company. Haight was a well-bred young boy of good
family, very quiet; almost every morning he went to Chapel. He was
always polite, even to his two friends. He invariably tried to be
pleasant and agreeable and had a way of making people like him.
Otherwise, his character was not strongly marked.

Geary was quite different. He never could forget himself. He was
incessantly talking about what he had done or was going to do. In the
morning he would inform Vandover of how many hours he had slept and of
the dreams he had dreamed. In the evening he would tell him everything
he had done that day; the things he had said, how many lectures he had
cut, what brilliant recitations he had made, and even what food he had
eaten at Memorial. He was pushing, self-confident, very shrewd and
clever, devoured with an inordinate ambition and particularly pleased
when he could get the better of anybody, even of Vandover or of young
Haight. He delighted to assume the management of things. Vandover, he
made his protege, taking over the charge of such business as the two had
in common. It was he who had found the room in Matthew's, getting it
away from all other applicants, securing it at the eleventh hour. He put
Vandover's name on the waiting list at Memorial, saw that he filled out
his blanks at the proper time, helped him balance his accounts, guided
him in the choice of his courses and in the making out of his
study-card.

"Look here, Charlie," Vandover would exclaim, throwing down the
Announcement of Courses, "I can't make this thing out. It's all in a
tangle. See here, I've got to fill up my hours some way or other; _you_
straighten this thing out for me. Find me some nice little course, two
hours a week, say, that comes late in the morning, a good hour after
breakfast; something easy, all lectures, no outside reading, nice
instructor and all that." And Geary would glance over the complicated
schedule, cleverly untangling it at once and would find two or three
such courses as Vandover desired.

Vandover's yielding disposition led him to submit to Geary's
dictatorship and he thus early began to contract easy, irresponsible
habits, becoming indolent, shirking his duty whenever he could, sure
that Geary would think for the two and pull him out of any difficulty
into which he might drift.

Otherwise the three freshmen were very much alike. They were hardly more
than boys and full of boy