But Fenton was vivaciously discussing last November’s ball games with his _vis-à-vis_, a middler whose name is unknown to history. It was some time before he said, looking far down the long table:-- “Bayard, who is it that says it takes three generations to make a gentleman?” “Why, Holmes, I suppose,” answered he who was addressed. “Who else would be likely to say it?” “Any of the Avonsons might have said it,” observed a gentlemanly fellow from the extreme end of the table; he returned his spoon to his saucer as he spoke. There were several students at the club who did not drink with their spoons in their teacups, and even laid the knife and fork in parallels upon the plate, and this was one of the men. He had an effective and tenderly cherished mustache. He was, on the whole, a handsome man. It was thought that he would settle over a city parish. “I doubt if there was ever an Avonson who could have said it, Bent,” replied Bayard. The Avonsons were a prominent New England family, not unknown to diplomacy and letters, nor even to Holt of the Hecla and St. Mary’s. “But why, then?” persisted Bent. “They have believed it too thoroughly and too long to say anything so fine.” Bent raised an interrogative eyebrow. “You won’t understand,” returned Bayard, smiling. All the fellows turned towards Bayard when he smiled; it was a habit they had. “You aren’t expected to. _You_ are destined for the Episcopal Church.” “I see the connection less than ever,” Bent maintained. “But I scent heresy somewhere. You are doomed to the stake, Bayard. That is clear as--as the Latin fathers. Have an apple,--do. It’s sour, but sound. It’s Baldwin year, or we shouldn’t get them except Sundays.” Bayard mechanically took the apple, and laid it down untouched. His eye wandered up the cold length of the long table decorated with stone china. Somehow, few aspects of the theological life struck his imagination so typically as a big vegetable dish piled with cold, unrelieved Baldwins, to be served for after-dinner fruit on a winter day. In the kind of mental chill which the smallest of causes may throw over a nature like his, Bayard did not exert himself to reply to his classmate, but fell into one of the sudden silences for which he was marked. “My father,” observed the New Hampshire man quietly, “was a farmer. He dug his own potatoes the day before he enlisted. Perhaps I am no judge, but I always thought he was a gentleman--when I was a little boy.” Tompkinton shouldered himself out of the conversation, asked one of the fellows what hour the Professor had decided on for eternal punishment, and went out into the wintry air, taking long strides to the lecture-room, with his notebook under the old blue army cape, of which the northwest wind flung up the scarlet side.