Clem’s progress from Lykes to Haylow was retarded by encounters with several acquaintances, and once, having passed the corner of his own building, he spent ten minutes with his arms on the window-sill of a lower-floor room talking to the inmates of it. But he reached his corridor eventually and found the door of Number 15 ajar. As he had closed it behind him in the morning he reached the conclusion that Jim had arrived, and when he had thrust it farther inward and crossed the threshold he decided that the conclusion was correct. Then, as the occupant of the room straightened up from the business of unpacking a suit-case opened on the window-seat, he was in doubt for an instant. If this was Jim, what had happened to him? CHAPTER VI JIM REPORTS After they had shaken hands, Clem took a good look at his new room-mate. The change in Jim’s appearance was due to two things, he decided. In the first place, Jim was dressed differently. He wore trousers of a grayish brown, a white negligee shirt with a small blue stripe, a semi-soft collar and a neatly tied dark-blue four-in-hand. The shoes were brown Oxfords and evidently new. The coat that matched the trousers was laid over the back of a chair. That suit, Clem reflected, had probably cost very little, but it fitted extremely well and looked well, too. Then Jim had filled out remarkably. He was still a long way from stout, but there was flesh enough now on his tall frame to take away the lanky look that had been his most striking feature last year. He seemed to hold himself straighter, too, as though he had become accustomed to his height, and to move with far less of awkwardness. “What have you been doing to yourself?” asked Clem. Jim stared questioningly. Apparently he was not aware of any change, and Clem explained. “Well, you look twenty pounds heavier, Jim; maybe more; and--” But he stopped there. To approve his present attire would be tantamount to a criticism of his former. “Yes, I guess I am heavier,” replied Jim. “I got mighty good food up at Blaisdell’s, and a heap of it; and then I was outdoors most of the time. Right healthy sort of life, I guess. Didn’t work hard, either; not really _work_.” “I suppose it was pretty good fun,” mused Clem. “I’d liked to have got up there for a few days, but it didn’t seem possible.” “Wish you had. I’d have shown you some real fishing. Like to fish, Harland?” “N-no, I don’t believe I do. Maybe because I’ve never done much. But it sounded pretty good, what you wrote, and if father hadn’t arranged a motor trip for the last part of the summer I think I’d have gone up there for three or four days.” “Guess you thought that was pretty cheeky, that letter of mine,” said Jim consciously. “Not a bit,” Clem assured him heartily. If he had, he had forgotten it now. “Awfully glad to have you, Jim.”