Kendall emerged from the doorway of Whitson Hall and stood for a minute at the top of the flight of worn granite steps. It was a warm, lazy day in the last week of September, a day that promised to become even warmer and lazier as it progressed. Just now the time was only a little after half-past eight, and breakfast was just over. The first recitation hour was at nine and in front of the buildings fellows were loitering in the sunlight. Here on the steps of Whitson at least a dozen were holding forth: Girard, who played center on the football team; Jensen, another pigskin follower; Davis, the manager, who was somewhat handicapped with the given name of Percival, which had been mercifully shortened and amended to “Perky”; Perry Whitehall, the dignified editor-in-chief of the school weekly, _The Scholiast_; and others whom Kendall knew only by sight. Many looked up as he came out and nodded or spoke to him. Doubtless any one of the three or four groups sitting or standing about the steps would have been pleased had he joined them, for Kendall had been a school hero in a small way ever since when, nearly a year ago now, he had won the Broadwood game by a kick from placement in the last two minutes of play. But Kendall was still rather shy, still very modest in his estimate of his own merits, and would rather have taken a licking than intrude where he wasn’t wanted. He had been rooming with Gerald Pennimore in 28 Clarke for four days now and was still wondering about it. Why Gerald, who was perhaps the richest boy in school――there was a Fourth Class fellow named Hodgkins who had just entered and whose father, a railway magnate, was popularly credited with the possession of more wealth than Mr. John T. Pennimore, the Steamship King――why Gerald, wealthy and popular, had selected him, who was anything but wealthy and whose circle of friends included possibly not more than a dozen or so, for a roommate was a puzzle. The only likely explanation, Kendall decided, was that Gerald had done it out of pure kindness of heart. Whatever the reason, however, Kendall was intensely grateful. It was fine to have such a fellow as Gerald Pennimore for a friend, fine to share such a comfortable, even luxurious room as Number 28, fine to get away from his former roommate, Harold Towne, a chap with whom anyone with less patience and good nature than Kendall could never have put up.