“It’s all wrong then--frightfully wrong,” declared Hewitt, with considerable heat. He had been increasingly irritated through the calm progress of Curtiss’s discourse, and now stood with his back to the fire-place, staring fixedly before him,--a spirited figure of protest. “We’re too young at college for that kind of rot,” he went on emphatically; “where, in the name of Heaven, can a fellow expect square treatment, if it isn’t right here among what, just now, you scornfully called ‘a multitude of lusty young men’? They ought to be too young and too lusty and too good fellows to care--even to know about--about--all that.” His words tumbled out noisily, and had the effect of noticeably increasing Robinson’s deliberateness. “The situation would be in no way remarkable, if it were not for just that fact,--our extreme youth.” Curtiss spoke as if he were still in college. “It’s taken rather for granted that young men, who are delightful in so many ways, are the complete embodiment, when chance herds them together, of the ‘hale-fellow-well-met-God-bless-everybody’ ideal a lot of people seem to have of them. The plain truth of the matter is, that at Harvard, at least, they aren’t at all. Wander a moment from the one royal road we all try to prance along in common here, and you’ll find most of us picking our way in very much the same varied paths we are destined to follow later on. The only wonder is that we should have found them so soon. What makes people’s hair stand on end is that young America should begin to classify himself so instinctively--the crystallisation of the social idea seems, to put it mildly, a trifle premature. But”--Curtiss’s shrug comprehended many things--“what are you going to do about it?” The question was perfectly general in intention, and might have ended the discussion had not Hewitt regarded it as the natural expression of Curtiss’s interest in his ambitions for a more diverting existence. “And yet, after all, I am a gentleman as well as they,” he said simply.