I'd been at the school about six months when one afternoon I was coming across the field that everybody called the "campus." I'd never called it that yet--it sounded like putting on. I met a lot of them coming down from their classes. I used to begin looking at them when they were way ahead, hoping there was somebody I knew and could speak to. I liked to speak to them. I'd had an introduction to most of them; but they didn't always remember me. When they did remember, they didn't always speak. Some of them done it on purpose. But always I knew which was such. That afternoon so many of them didn't speak to me that all of a sudden I felt crazy to get away from them all, off somewhere by myself. I run down the hill back of the main building. A stone wall went along by the road. The wall was pretty high, but I put my hands on it the way I used to at home, and I jumped up on it with my head in some branches. And I says out loud: "I know how Keddie Bingy used to feel when he got drunk." "My word!" said somebody. "And how did he feel?" I looked down, and there was an automobile drawn up by the wall and a man in it, rolling a cigarette. "Don't you know?" I says. "I don't know but I do," says he. "For example, I've been sitting here one-half hour waiting for my sister. Do I feel the way you mean?" "Nothing like," I says, and turned to jump down again. "Don't let me drive you away," he says; "I don't mean to bother you. I beg your pardon like anything." "It's all right," I said; "I was going. I didn't want to sit up here. I don't know what I got up here for, anyway." I picked up my books, and he spoke again. "If you're really going," he said, "I wonder if I could send a message by you?" "Sure thing," I says. "Do you know Antoinette Massy?" he asked. "I know her when I see her," I said; "I never spoke to her." "She's in the tennis court over there--or she said she'd be," he went on. "Would you mind telling her that her brother has been sitting here like an image for thirty-six minutes--up to now? And that in five minutes he won't be here any more?" "Oh," I says, "Miss Massy! She went up to Mann Hall to rehearse, half an hour ago. They never get through till dinner time." "Gad!" he said; "it takes a man's sister to put him in his true light." He done something to the car, and then looked at me. "Would--would you care to come for a little spin?" he asked. [Illustration: "Would you care to come for a little spin?"] "I'd care like everything," I says; "but I can't go." "No?" he says. "Yes, you can!" "I'm not going," I says. "Thanks, though." "Would you mind telling me why not?" he says. "Since you say you want to, you know." I couldn't think of anything but the truth. "I'm trying to act as nice as I can," I says, "since I've been to this school. And I guess it's nicer not to go with you." His face was pleasant when he kept on looking at me, though he was laughing at me, too.