The least old of all things in Randolph's world were the students who flooded Churchton. There were two or three thousand of them, and hundreds of new ones came with every September. Sometimes he felt prompted to "collect" them, as contrasts to his older curios. They were fully as interesting, in their way, as brasswork and leatherwork, those products of peasant natures and peasant hands. But these youths ran past one's eye, ran through one's fingers. They were not static, not even stable. They were restless birds of passage who fidgeted through their years, and even through the days of which the years were made: intent on their own affairs and their own companions; thankless for small favors and kind attentions--even unconscious of them; soaking up goodwill and friendly offices in a fashion too damnably taken-for-granted ... You gave them an evening among your books, with discreet things to drink, to smoke, to play at, or you offered them a good dinner at some good hotel; and you never saw them after ... They said "Yes, sir," or "Yep;" but whether they pained you by being too respectful or rasped you by being too rowdyish, it all came to the same: they had little use for you; they readily forgot and quickly dropped you. "I wonder whether instructors are a shade better," queried Basil Randolph. "Or when do sense and gratitude and savoir-faire begin?" A few days later he had returned to the loose-leaf faculty. Cope's page was now in place, with full particulars in his own hand: his interest was "English Literature," it appeared. "H'm! nothing very special in that," commented Randolph. But Cope's penmanship attracted him. It was open and easy: "He never gave _his_ instructor any trouble in reading his themes." Yet the hand was rather boyish. Was it formed or unformed? "I am no expert," confessed Randolph. He put Cope's writing on a middle ground and let it go at that. He recalled the lighted windows and wondered near which one of them the same hand filled note-books and corrected students' papers. "Rather a dreary routine, I imagine, for a young fellow of his age. Still, he may like it, possibly." He thought of his own early studies and of his own early self-sufficiencies. He felt disposed to find his earlier self in this young man--or at least an inclination to look for himself there. The next afternoon he walked over to Medora Phillips. Medora's upper floor gave asylum to a half-brother of her husband's--an invalid who seldom saw the outside world and who depended for solace and entertainment on neighbors of his own age and interests. Randolph expected to contribute, during the week, about so many hours of talk or of reading. But he would have a few words with Medora before going up to Joe. Medora, among her grilles and lambrequins, was only too willing to talk about young Cope.