t met her eyes. There were
Burne and Fred Sloane arrayed to the last dot like the lurid figures
on college posters. They had bought flaring suits with huge peg-top
trousers and gigantic padded shoulders. On their heads were rakish
college hats, pinned up in front and sporting bright orange-and-black
bands, while from their celluloid collars blossomed flaming orange ties.
They wore black arm-bands with orange "P's," and carried canes
flying Princeton pennants, the effect completed by socks and peeping
handkerchiefs in the same color motifs. On a clanking chain they led a
large, angry tom-cat, painted to represent a tiger.

A good half of the station crowd was already staring at them, torn
between horrified pity and riotous mirth, and as Phyllis, with her
svelte jaw dropping, approached, the pair bent over and emitted a
college cheer in loud, far-carrying voices, thoughtfully adding the
name "Phyllis" to the end. She was vociferously greeted and escorted
enthusiastically across the campus, followed by half a hundred village
urchins--to the stifled laughter of hundreds of alumni and visitors,
half of whom had no idea that this was a practical joke, but thought
that Burne and Fred were two varsity sports showing their girl a
collegiate time.

Phyllis's feelings as she was paraded by the Harvard and Princeton
stands, where sat dozens of her former devotees, can be imagined. She
tried to walk a little ahead, she tried to walk a little behind--but
they stayed close, that there should be no doubt whom she was with,
talking in loud voices of their friends on the football team, until she
could almost hear her acquaintances whispering:

"Phyllis Styles must be _awfully hard up_ to have to come with _those
two_."

That had been Burne, dynamically humorous, fundamentally serious. From
that root had blossomed the energy that he was now trying to orient with
progress....

So the weeks passed and March came and the clay feet that Amory looked
for failed to appear. About a hundred juniors and seniors resigned
from their clubs in a final fury of righteousness, and the clubs in
helplessness turned upon Burne their finest weapon: ridicule. Every one
who knew him liked him--but what he stood for (and he began to stand for
more all the time) came under the lash of many tongues, until a frailer
man than he would have been snowed under.

"Don't you mind losing prestige?" asked Amory one night. They had taken
to exchanging calls several