Meanwhile, there was Mrs. Grant to be considered. After a week had gone by without any move having been made to put anybody in with him, Larry cornered the motherly person one afternoon in the lower hall and asked her about it. “If you could find somebody you’d like to room with, of course I’d be glad,” said the house-mother. “But I don’t like to ask you to put up with a stranger.” “You know of somebody?” Larry asked. “Yes; there is a young man here taking post-graduate work for his Master’s degree. He’s in the Chemical, and he’d like to come.” Larry had an instantaneous and rather disquieting picture of himself rooming with something worse than an upperclassman――a man who had already been graduated, who was probably working against time, and who would be likely to object most strenuously to the lame dogs and other visitors. “Will you let me look around a little and see if I can find somebody first?” he asked; and the reply was as kindly as his own mother could have made it. “Certainly I will. Mr. Agnew seems to be a very pleasant gentleman, but he is at least ten years older than you are, and on that account ... as I say, if you can find somebody you’d like to room with――anybody you’d pick out would be all right with me.” Larry fairly ducked at the mention of the “Chemical’s” age. That would settle it for fair. Why, good goodness――a fellow that old would have forgotten all about his undergraduate days and what he did himself when he was in the braying stage. “I’ll look around,” said Larry hastily, and made his escape. That evening, when there were half a dozen fellows in the room, Larry noticed again a thing he had been noticing for a week or more; which was the fact that little Purdick had stopped coming to the Man-o’-War――that he hadn’t shown up since that evening when he had outstayed the others to say his say about the frats and the classes and masses. Also, Larry, trying to hammer the proper method of working a trig. problem into Ollie McKnight’s not any too mathematical head, was conscious of a duty unfulfilled. He had been meaning to look Purdick up and had neglected doing it. “Hey, Belcher!” he called to a fellow stretching himself lazily on the bed that used to be Dick’s, “have you seen anything of Purdy lately? He’s in your section.” “Nary a rag,” said the lazy one. “Dried up and blown away, I guess.” McKnight looked up from his figuring pad. “Friend o’ yours, Donnie――this Purdy person?” he asked. “Sure,” said Larry. “Ump. He’s having one fine, large, tough time, so the fellows tell me. Flunked out last year Freshman and had to take the work over. Nothing much to him but grit, but he’s got a peak load o’ that. Works in Hassler’s to keep going, but I haven’t seen him there for a week or so. Darned shame a fellow like that can’t get a little boost over the humps, I’ll say. If Old Sheddon had any heart she’d have scholarships, or something, for ’em.”