“Who--I? Oh, I don’t know! You can’t very well send fifteen or twenty dollars, and let it go at that, I suppose; that’s too easy. I’d fix up some scheme with the Secretary,--he knows all about that kind of thing,--and keep the creature going; pay on the instalment plan for thirty or forty years,” he laughed, “you know, the way people do when they buy a piano or a set of Kipling--or any old thing.” This was about as far as Haydock dared to go. He often wondered how Wolcott could be induced to interest himself in something along the lines suggested by Barrows, the Secretary; it was the incalculable benefit such an interest would be to Wolcott that made him wish it; and he had, as often, given the problem up. For Wolcott took the initiative in nothing; he never had known the necessity that compels one to. The only effort he was ever called on to make was that of selection. It seemed as if everything in the world--the Secretary’s letter included--came tumbling to crave approval at the boy’s feet. And he approved of so little--least of all, of the people (Ellis was one of them) who butted their heads against the mighty wall of his prejudices. Haydock, who, perhaps, knew him better than any one did, was occasionally nimble enough to clamber over the barrier. When he failed, he consoled himself with the thought that, unlike Ellis and some others, his head was still intact. For, in an odd sort of way that suggested the congeniality of mind and matter, the two were excellent friends. “Well, ‘I must go to bed and get strong for dear old Harvard,’” announced Wolcott, abruptly. He had once read that sentence in a college story, and had quoted it, with intense amusement, every night since. Haydock leaned against the doorway, while The Magnificent One slid into bed. “Bed’s a good place, isn’t it?” said Wolcott, cuddling his sunburnt face in the pillow. “Oh, Haystack,--I want to get up at seven,--leave a note on my boots as you go out.” “Have you found any one yet to tutor you in History 19?” asked Haydock, from the other room, where he was scribbling a notice for the janitor. “Yes, I start in to-morrow.” “I didn’t know anybody was tutoring in that course this year. Who did you get?” “I don’t know his name. Oh, yes, I do, too. He’s a freak named McGaw; wears a black cutaway coat with braid round the edge, and looks nervous. Good-night, old Haystack. Don’t forget the lights.” Before Haydock made the room dark, he took the Secretary’s letter from the mantelpiece, and put it on Wolcott’s desk, where it could not very well be overlooked. II