When Jim had declared in his letter to Clem that he was “neat about the place” he had, Clem soon decided, stated less than the facts. Clem himself was certainly not untidy, but his idea of neatness and Jim’s were wide apart. Jim looked after his part of Number 15 so carefully and minutely that Clem’s half of the room suffered badly by comparison. Clem said once: “You aren’t neat, Jim, you’re finnicky!” For a fortnight Clem really suffered from such excess of tidiness, for quite unconsciously Jim’s attentions were extended to his room-mate’s territory and the book tossed on the table in the morning had mysteriously disappeared by afternoon, to be discovered, after patient search, neatly hidden under a pile of others. If he left his cap on his bed, half an hour later it was gone. At first he used to look on the floor for it and under the bed. Later he learned to go directly to his closet and take it down from a hook. The second time this experience fell to him he said: “Hang it all, Jim, what’s the idea? Here it is in the closet. You must have put it there. I know I didn’t!” “Really?” asked Jim, surprised. “I don’t remember touching it. I’m awfully sorry.” “Oh, it’s all right,” answered Clem, “but do you know what I think? I think you must have been born in a filing cabinet!” Jim looked slightly blank, and Clem went out without elucidating. After some two weeks of life in Number 15 with Jim, Clem caught the habit. He never attained to such perfection of orderliness as the other’s, and doubtless to the end of their days together Jim secretly considered Clem just a trifle careless about the room, but, just as evidence of how thoroughly he had fallen under Jim’s spell, he once, having reached the door on his way to chapel, returned the length of the room to place his slippers more perfectly in alignment under the head of the bed. It is doubtful, however, if Jim would have given him any credit for that. Jim would have kept his slippers, had he owned a pair, in his closet! At the beginning of the term the two were not together a great deal outside of sleeping and study hours. Jim foregathered frequently with certain members of the Maine-and-Vermont Club and Clem’s acquaintances were not yet Jim’s. They might have been, for Clem suggested more than once that his room-mate accompany him on his social excursions. But Jim invariably had an excuse. The latter did meet two or three of Clem’s circle of intimates, but the meetings were only casual. The school year was a fortnight old when Jim first blossomed out in society.