Boller clapped an arm across my shoulders in friendly fashion. "You're three days late, Malcolm, but better late than never. I suppose you were hesitating between McGraw and Harvard." "Oh, no!" I faltered, not fathoming his pleasantry. "I had to wait until the tailor finished my new suit. It should have been done last Monday, but----" Something in Boller's eyes checked me. He was regarding me from head to foot so gravely that I divined that I might have joined the crew of the Ark in my new clothes, judged by their cut. "You have come here to study agriculture, I presume," he remarked most pleasantly. So subtle a reference to my bucolic appearance was lost on my innocent mind. He seemed quite serious and as he was mistaken I wanted to set him right. I was proud of my laudable ambition. Proclaiming it had brought me only commendation, and I proclaimed it now. "I'm going to be a minister," I said, drawing myself up a little. "Indeed--a minister--how interesting!" returned Boller, raising his eyebrows. Now had he laughed at me, had he called his fellows from the step to mob me, in the glory of my martyrdom I should have held fast to my purpose; or had he flattered me like Miss Spinner or Mr. Smiley, my vanity would have carried me on my chosen path. His middle course was disconcerting. He treated my ambition as though it were quite a natural one and just about as interesting as to follow dentistry or plumbing. "I'm going to be a missionary," I said in a louder tone, hoping to arouse in him either antagonism or adulation. "Curious," he returned. "Very curious. Why I am thinking of taking up the same line myself. It makes a man so interesting to the girls. I've a cousin who is a minister, and last year he received seventeen pairs of knit slippers from the young ladies of his congregation. That's going some--eh, Malcolm?" What a different picture from my cherished one of cork hats and express rifles! The suggestion was horribly insidious. To be interesting to women _en masse_ was to my manly view exceedingly unmanly; to labor for reward in knit slippers the depth of degradation. I was about to declare to Boller that I was not going to be his kind of a clergyman when I stopped to ask myself if I had ever known any other kind, if my own ideal were not as unattainable as to be another Ivanhoe or Captain Cook. Mr. Pound rose before me, his feet incased in the loving handiwork of Miss Spinner. From him my mind shot wide afield to the Reverend Doctor Bumpus, fresh from the dark continent, thanking our congregation for the barrel of clothing sent to his eleven children in far-off Zululand. Thoughts like these were as arrows in the heart of my noble purpose. "I haven't absolutely made up my mind," I said suddenly. But Boller refused to accept such a qualification. He had me firmly by the arm and brought me face to face with the loungers on the step.