But alas for good resolutions! There was a charge of feet outside on the brick walk, a hammering at the door, and a covey of happy, irresponsible freshmen burst into the room. There was no packing that night. But what did it matter? There was to-morrow and many, many other to-morrows stretching away in a seemingly limitless vista of happy holidays, and the fact that when the visitors finally took their departure the few things that the roommates had already packed had been seized upon by rude hands and strewn about the study worried no one. Nothing matters when “finals” are over and summer beckons. CHAPTER III AN INVITATION TO MISS EMERY Two days later three boys were seated about an up-stairs room in a house in West 57th Street, New York City. The room was large and square and tastefully furnished, but you would have guessed at once that it was a boy’s room; and the guess would have been correct. Roy Porter was the host, and his guests were Mr. Thomas H. Eaton, otherwise known as Chub, and Mr. Richard Somes, better known as Dick. Dick, as we have learned through his letter, has just graduated from Ferry Hill School, and for the present is staying with his father at a New York hotel. While Roy lives in New York, and Chub hails from Pittsburg, Dick claims the distinction of living nowhere in particular. If you ask him he will tell you that he lives “out West.” As a matter of fact, however, he is a nomad. Born in Ohio, he has successively resided in Nebraska, Montana, Colorado, Nevada, London, and one or two other places. His father is a mining man whose business of buying, selling, and operating mines takes him to many places. Dick’s mother has been dead for three years. Dick himself is big, blond, and seventeen. He isn’t exactly handsome, judged by accepted standards of masculine beauty, but he has nice gray eyes, a smile that wins you at once, and a pleasant voice. Somehow, in spite of the fact that nature has endowed him with a miscellaneous lot of features he is rather attractive; as Chub has once remarked: “He’s just about as homely as a mud fence, only somehow you forget all about it.” It is the crowning sorrow of Dick’s young life that, owing to his nomadic existence, his schooling has been somewhat neglected, with the result that he is a year behind his two friends and that when he reaches college in the fall--if he’s lucky enough to get in--he will be only a freshman, while Roy and Chub are dignified and superior sophomores. Chub, however, tries to console him by telling him not to worry, that like as not he won’t pass the exams! Chub is staying with Roy, as his guest, and Dick has taken dinner with them this evening. And now, having left Mr. Porter to his paper in the library and Mrs. Porter to her book, they have scurried up to Roy’s room for a good long talk; for there is much to be said. At the present moment Roy, sprawled on his bed, is doing the talking.