umor. He thought her awfully nice, with
lots of sense; he liked her letting him come back without any fooling or
fuss, and he began to admire instead of despising her for it. Decidedly
it was, as she would have said, the chicquest sort of thing. What was the
use, anyway? He made up his mind.

When he said he must go and dress for the Tree, he took leave of her
first, and he was aware of a vivid emotion, which was like regret in her
at parting with him. She said, Must he? She seemed to want to say
something more to him; while he was dismissing himself from the others,
he noticed that once or twice she opened her lips as if she were going to
speak. In the end she did nothing more important than to ask if he had
seen her brother; but after he had left the party he turned and saw her
following him with eyes that he fancied anxious and even frightened in
their gaze.

The riot round the Tree roared itself through its wonted events. Class
after class of the undergraduates filed in and sank upon the grass below
the terraces and parterres of brilliantly dressed ladies within the
quadrangle of seats; the alumni pushed themselves together against the
wall of Holder Chapel; the men of the Senior class came last in their
grotesque variety of sweaters and second and third best clothes for the
scramble at the Tree. The regulation cheers tore from throats that grew
hoarser and hoarser, till every class and every favorite in the faculty
had been cheered. Then the signal-hat was flung into the air, and the
rush at the Tree was made, and the combat' for the flowers that garlanded
its burly waist began.

Jeff's size and shape forbade him to try for the flowers from the
shoulders of others. He was one of a group of jays who set their backs to
the Tree, and fought away all comers except their own; they pulled down
every man not of their sort, and put up a jay, who stripped the Tree of
its flowers and flung them to his fellows below. As he was let drop to
the ground, Jeff snatched a handful of his spoil from him, and made off
with it toward the place where he had seen Bessie Lynde and her party.
But when he reached the place, shouldering and elbowing his way through
the press, she was no longer there. He saw her hat at a distance through
the crowd, where he did not choose to follow, and he stuffed the flowers
into his breast to give to her later. He expected to meet her somewhere
in the evening; if not, he would try to find her at her aunt'