They had travelled in a special train of private cars lent by the parents of some of the members. They had had a very good time, because a Glee club trip is always bound to have that, and because Southern people know how to help young men in this respect about as well as any people in the world. Lawrence was glad it was over. He had not intended to go on the trip this year. He had been on the club since he was a freshman. He knew all there was to know about it, and there could be little novelty in this sort of thing for him. But that was not the reason. Of course it was not. Harry Lawrence enjoyed travelling about the country with a rollicking lot of congenial fellows, and being made much of by old grads., and admired before the glare of foot-lights by millions of attractive girls, and dancing with them afterwards until three o'clock in the morning, like any other normal, healthy young man. It was not because he was _blasé_. He wasn't that sort of fool. In the first place Lawrence had suddenly gone home, early in December, with something pronounced by a little, short doctor with mild blue eyes which saw everything to be a form of neurasthenia. This was brought on by overwork and worry and other causes. He had held a position of considerable responsibility during the football season. He had worried over it a good deal. Although, when he reached home, he braced up with astonishing rapidity, he conceived a notion that instead of flying over the United States at the rate of ever so many miles an hour, he would like very well to sit still and yawn by the fireplace at home with slippers on. His mother opened up the old place on Long Island for a part of every winter, and he thought he could put in a very comfortable old-fashioned vacation out there with her. He had an idea that it would do him good to take some long tramps over the meadows with a gun and a dog, and to spend whole afternoons on a horse with pure country air whistling in his ears. Perhaps, if he felt right cocky, he might borrow some pinks of his brother-in-law and ride to the hounds with his Ass-cousins on New Year's Day. And the evenings would pass pleasantly enough in fighting with Helen, his married sister, across the table, and in guying his kid brother Dick, the prep.; and then he meant to have many long after-dinner smoke-talks with his father, with whom he had recently become acquainted. It was on this last account, as much as any, that he wanted to stay at home.