ad been experimenting
with mining stocks and, in consequence, his allowance, while liberal,
was not at all what he had expected.

"Joe's" had the additional advantage of seclusion from curious
upper-class eyes, so at four each afternoon Amory, accompanied by friend
or book, went up to experiment with his digestion. One day in March,
finding that all the tables were occupied, he slipped into a chair
opposite a freshman who bent intently over a book at the last table.
They nodded briefly. For twenty minutes Amory sat consuming bacon buns
and reading "Mrs. Warren's Profession" (he had discovered Shaw quite
by accident while browsing in the library during mid-years); the other
freshman, also intent on his volume, meanwhile did away with a trio of
chocolate malted milks.

By and by Amory's eyes wandered curiously to his fellow-luncher's book.
He spelled out the name and title upside down--"Marpessa," by Stephen
Phillips. This meant nothing to him, his metrical education having been
confined to such Sunday classics as "Come into the Garden, Maude," and
what morsels of Shakespeare and Milton had been recently forced upon
him.

Moved to address his vis-a-vis, he simulated interest in his book for a
moment, and then exclaimed aloud as if involuntarily:

"Ha! Great stuff!"

The other freshman looked up and Amory registered artificial
embarrassment.

"Are you referring to your bacon buns?" His cracked, kindly voice
went well with the large spectacles and the impression of a voluminous
keenness that he gave.

"No," Amory answered. "I was referring to Bernard Shaw." He turned the
book around in explanation.

"I've never read any Shaw. I've always meant to." The boy paused and
then continued: "Did you ever read Stephen Phillips, or do you like
poetry?"

"Yes, indeed," Amory affirmed eagerly. "I've never read much of
Phillips, though." (He had never heard of any Phillips except the late
David Graham.)

"It's pretty fair, I think. Of course he's a Victorian." They sallied
into a discussion of poetry, in the course of which they introduced
themselves, and Amory's companion proved to be none other than "that
awful highbrow, Thomas Parke D'Invilliers," who signed the passionate
love-poems in the Lit. He was, perhaps, nineteen, with stooped
shoulders, pale blue eyes, and, as Amory could tell from his general
appearance, without much conception of social competition and such
phenomena of absorbing interest. Still, he liked bo