"Gusty," said Professor Carr of the mathematics department, showing obvious but harmless delight at finding the right word. He was a little man with red cheeks and a white Vandyke, as innocent and absent-minded as college professors are supposed to be, who gave the impression of residing permanently in a special paradise of transcendental and transfinite numbers. "It seems to have gone away now," said Mrs. Carr, waving aside Tansy's handkerchief and experimentally blinking her eyes, which looked unpleasantly naked and birdlike until she replaced her thick glasses. "Oh, that must be the others," she added, as the chimes sounded. "Isn't it marvelous that everyone at Hempnell is so punctual?" As Norman started for the front door he imagined for one crazy moment that someone must be whirling a bull-roarer outside, until he realized it could only be the rising wind living up to Professor Carr's description of it. He was confronted by Evelyn Sawtelle's angular form, wind whipping her black coat against her legs. Her equally angular face, with its shoe-button eyes, was thrust toward his own. "Let us in, or it'll blow us in," she said. Like most of her attempts at coy or facetious humor, it did not come off, perhaps because she made it sound so stupidly grim. She entered, with Hervey in tow, and made for Tansy. "My dear, how are you? Whatever have you been doing with yourself?" Again he was struck by the eager and meaningful tone of the question. For a moment he wondered whether the women had somehow gotten an inkling of Tansy's eccentricity, and the recent crisis. But Mrs. Sawtelle was so voice-conscious that she was always emphasizing things the wrong way. * * * * * There was a noisy flurry of greetings. Totem made a squeaky noise and darted out of the way of the crowd of human beings. Mrs. Carr's silvery voice rose above the rest. "Oh, Professor Sawtelle, I want to tell you how _much_ we all appreciated your talk on city planning. It was truly _significant_!" Sawtelle writhed, grinning in a flustered way. Norman thought: "So now _he's_ the favorite for the chairmanship." Professor Carr had made a beeline for the bridge tables, and was wistfully fingering the cards. "I've been studying the mathematics of the shuffle," he began with a bright-eyed air, as soon as Norman drifted into range. "The shuffle is supposed to make it a matter of chance what hands are dealt. But that is not true at all." He broke open a new pack of cards, and spread the deck. "The manufacturers arrange these by suits--thirteen spades, thirteen hearts, and so on. Now suppose I make a perfect shuffle--divide the pack into equal parts and interleaf the cards one by one." He tried to demonstrate, but the cards got away from him.