"Your cap and gown are there on my bed, and you must change your tie and do it quickly." "The procession will form in one half-hour, mother, and they can't possibly begin till I tune up. I have half a mind to be late so I can see 'em squirm." Richard took the tie from his mother's hand and stationed himself before the glass in her bedroom, where the walnut furniture was heaviest and most elaborately carved. "Think of it, my last morning in chapel! No more eight o'clocks! No more Pol Econ, no more Chemistry, no more worthless stuff of any sort!" "I hope you know your speech _thoroughly_, Richard." "I do, oh, I do!" "I could never memorize well, and I was always frightened when I had to say a piece in school. Aren't you at _all_ nervous?" "Not at all. I'm cool-headed and cold-hearted. _Morituri te salutamus_, that is, 'We, about to die, salute you!'" "You are not going to say that, Richard!" "No, mother, darling!" Richard folded his black gown about him. "I bow like this, till my long wings touch the ground, and I say, '_Alius annus cum perpetua sua agitatione abiit, et alia classis in vitæ limine est_,' etc. Wouldn't old Jehu skin me alive if I failed? It is bad enough that Eleanor Bent is ahead of me, of _me_, if you please--faculty family and all that. Now, good-bye, mother. Have a little more faith in me than you look, or I may rush to your shoulder weeping." With a "Farewell, great Queen, live forever," and a light touch of lips on his mother's broad, smooth cheek, he was gone, down the polished banister. When the screen door had slammed, Mrs. Lister sat for a while quietly by her bed. There was, now that Richard was started, plenty of time. She had been up since six o'clock, but she was not tired, being a person of almost inexhaustible vigor. The house was in perfect order, 'Manda was singing in the kitchen, and she had a short breathing space. She loved those moments in which, her tasks finished, she could sit perfectly still, almost without thinking, yet vividly conscious of her blessings, of her good husband, of her fine son, and of her pleasant home. Above all, she was thankful that she was content, that she was driven by no wild impulses as was Thomasina Davis, who often sat with her in the morning and in the evening heard a concert in Baltimore. She visited Baltimore--which she called "Baltimer"--in the fall and again in the spring, after having made detailed, dignified, and long-announced plans, and there, with the aid of a commissionnaire, made her purchases for six months. She enjoyed these journeys, but she was always glad to get home with her silks and linens, her little stories of the courteous attentions of the Baltimoreans, of the baked blue-fish, and of the stately house of her old cousin on Fayette Street.