he word came that he had not only not failed but had rather covered
himself with glory. The Dean himself, an old friend of Doctor Holiday's,
wrote expressing his congratulations and the hope that this performance
of his nephew's was a pledge of better things in the future and that this
fourth Holiday to pass through the college might yet reflect credit upon
it and the Holiday name.

Ted himself emphatically disclaimed all praise whatsoever in the matter
and cut short his uncle's attempt at expressing his appreciation not only
of the successful finish of the examinations but the whole summer's hard
work and steadiness.

"I am glad if you are satisfied, Uncle Phil," he said. "But there isn't
any credit coming to me. It was the least I could do after making such a
confounded mess of things. Let's forget it."

But Ted Holiday was not quite the same unthinking young barbarian in
September that he had been in June. Nobody could work as he had worked
that summer without gaining something in character and self-respect.
Moreover, being constantly as he was with his brother and uncle, he
would have been duller than he was not to get a "hunch," as he would
have called it, of what it meant to be a Holiday of the authentic sort.
Larry's example was particularly salutary. The younger Holiday could
not help comparing his own weak-willed irresponsibility of conduct with
the older one's quiet self-control and firmness of principle. Larry's
love for Ruth was the real thing. Ted could see that, and it made his
own random, ill-judged attraction to Madeline Taylor look crude and
cheap if nothing worse. He hated to remember that affair in Cousin
Emma's garden. He made up his mind there would be no more things like
that to have to remember.

"You can tell old Bob Caldwell," he wrote from college to his uncle,
"that he'll sport no more caddies and golf balls at my expense. Flunking
is too damned expensive every way, saving your presence, Uncle Phil. No
more of it for this child. But don't get it into your head I am a
violently reformed character. I am nothing of the kind and don't want to
be. If I see any signs of angel pin-feathers cropping out I'll shave 'em.
I'd hate to be conspicuously virtuous. All the same if I have a few
grains more sense than I had last year they are mostly to your credit.
Fact is, Uncle Phil, you are a peach and I am just beginning to realize
it, more fool I."

Tony also flitted from the Hill that September for h