nd studied it with a deliberate lack of sentiment. He
fancied her desirable lips framing epithets of angry contempt and those
other words to which he had given his own significance.
"You'll not forget."
He looked so long, repeating it in his mind so often, that at last his
eyes blurred, and the pictured lips seemed, indeed, to curve and
straighten.
"You'll not forget."
He tapped the photograph with his forefinger.
"You're going to help me remember," he muttered. "I'll not forget."
VII
He placed the photograph and the broken crop at the bottom of his
oilcloth suitcase. The rest of his packing was simple; he had so little
that was actually his own. There were a few books on a shelf, relics of
his erratic attendance at the neighbouring high school--he regretted now
that his ambition there had been physical rather that mental. Even in
the development of his muscles, however, his brain had grown a good
deal, for he was bright enough. If he made himself work, drawing on
what money he had, he might get ready for college by fall. He had
always envied the boys, who had drifted annually from the high school to
the remote and exhilarating grandeur of a university.
What had Old Planter's sequence been? Education, money, breeding. Of
course. And he guessed that the three necessities might, to an extent,
walk hand in hand. The acquisition of an education would mean personal
contacts, helpful financially, projecting, perhaps, that culture that he
felt was as essential as the rest. Certainly the starting place for him
was a big university where a man, once in, could work his way through.
Lambert went to Yale. Harvard sprang into his mind, but there was the
question of railroad fare and lost time. He'd better try his luck at
Princeton which wasn't far and which had, he'd heard, a welcome for boys
working their way through college.
He examined his bank book. Fortunately, since he had lived with his
parents, he had had little opportunity or need for spending. The balance
showed nearly five hundred dollars, and he would receive fifty more in
the morning. If he could find someone to bolster up his insufficient
schooling for a part of that amount he'd make a go of it; he'd be fairly
on his course.
He went to bed, but he slept restlessly. He wanted to be away from
Oakmont and at work. Through his clouded mind persisted his desire for a
parting glimpse of Sylvia. If he slept at all it was to the discordant
memory of he
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