"It's a dreadful bore," he said to me in his lazy, rueful way. "I'd be
ten times more comfortable here--but I don't want to insult the
brothers. However, you'll come up to the house and see me just as often,
won't you?"

I promised him I would, but he seemed to know as well as I that I would
not. A sophomore paying nightly visits to a senior in the fraternity
house where that sophomore had only a year ago been smiled politely
out--no, it didn't seem even probable. And so, when I had helped
Trevelyan put his last bit of furniture upon a truck--and had tucked
among the rungs of many Morris chairs the bundle of flags and college
shields which he had overlooked--I could hardly bear to shake hands with
him. We both knew that it was something in the nature of a definite
goodbye; at any rate, so far as college was concerned.

"A damned nuisance, this," he said thickly, his short-sighted eyes
screwing up oddly. "And if it wasn't for the brothers--" But the
brothers did win him, and I lost a friend thereby.

The home to which I must go seemed lonelier than ever now. I was not
expecting Aunt Selina for two more weeks, and so I hit upon the idea of
inviting some one to stay with me until then.

Frank Cohen! Yes, I would ask Frank Cohen. He was going to high school
now, and the branch which he attended was not so far from where I lived.
It would be convenient for him, and perhaps a happy change from the East
Side crowdedness which he had had to encounter all his life.

He was as glad to come as I to have him. I gave him Aunt Selina's room
to sleep in, and we sat there, when our homework was done, many evenings
until past midnight, talking gently and thoughtfully of many things. He
was a boy much as I had been--and perhaps, still was. He was shy to an
uncomfortable degree, low of voice, dreamy in manner. But when he was
aroused to something especial, he became uncontrollably intense, his
eyes flashing and his knees trembling, so that his whole small body
seemed but the sheer vibration of his thoughts.

He was hoping to go to college, when his high school days were over. He
had not dared mention it at home, though, because he knew how poor his
father was, and how much of a help he would be when he could go to work
and begin to carry home his weekly earnings. He hated to go into a
shoddy little business; he wanted to study further, to take up some
profession--perhaps the law. Or if he did go into business, he wanted to
have