He had intended to say good-bye to Cambridge the next morning, and take the one-o’clock train for New York. But the next morning, after breakfasting at the Holly Tree,--there is no place else to breakfast on Class Day except the Oak Grove, and Beverly disliked the high stools of that place and the condescending services of the dethroned empresses who wait on one there,--he found it was too late to catch the one o’clock without more effort than he was able to make on so warm a day. So, in a moment of tolerance induced perhaps by the realisation that this was, after all, “good-bye,” he strolled over to the Yard. The exercises in Sanders Theatre had just ended, and the “fair invaders” were beginning to invade by the hundreds. They streamed in brilliant procession along the walks, and swarmed over the shady lawns,--glorified groups of summer millinery, trailing after them the pale pink odour of sachet powder and blond hair. They took possession of the parapet of Matthews, the chairs and benches and doorsteps in front of Hollis and Stoughton and Holworthy, stretching the length of the Yard in a many coloured border that resembled the horticultural orgies of the Public Garden. Celestial companies of maidens in diaphanous drapery floated past Beverly, in the wake of panting but determined ladies richly upholstered. “‘On, on to the Pudding spread, My daughters must be--shall be fed,’” the leaders seemed to say, as they elbowed through the crowd at the exit. Seniors in fluttering gowns and wilted collars, with proud mothers and satisfied fathers and eager sisters and observant aunts, seniors with one another, and lonely, unattached seniors Beverly had never seen before, who looked as if they didn’t quite know whether they were enjoying themselves or not, sauntered by, mopping their foreheads. The Yard was alive, not with the customary sprinkling of business-like young men hastening, note-book in hand, to lectures, but with a riot of colour, a swishing of skirts, a vague, babbling gaiety that rose in places to an acute trebleness. And there was the smell of festivity in the hot air,--a smell of pine branches and Chinese lanterns. Beverly walked once around the Yard, staring severely at the various factors of the gigantic picnic, and was passing Matthews on his way out, when a sudden gust of wind blew a newspaper from the lap of a woman seated on the steps of the building. He strolled after it until it stopped flapping over the grass, picked it up, and, hat in hand, returned it to its owner. He had no difficulty in identifying the lady, although she was one of many resting on the steps, for she waved the remaining sheets of the paper at him as he approached, and smiled largely. “I never was so embarrassed,” she declared, beaming up at him. “There is no need to be, I assure you,” said Beverly, with a little bow.