The big dining hall which ran across the north end of the building and accommodated one hundred students and faculty members at its fourteen tables, was well filled when they entered. Bert led Ordway toward the table at the far end of the room at which he had sat last term only to find that, in the confusion incident to the beginning of school, all the seats there had been taken. There were not two empty chairs together anywhere near by and, in the end, Bert and Ordway were obliged to sit at separate tables, the latter, as Bert saw, being sandwiched in between Pop Driver and a lower middle boy named Keller. Bert’s own seat placed him amongst fellows whom he knew only well enough to speak to, and he was frankly bored and left the room as soon as he had satisfied a not enthusiastic hunger. Ordway, however, was still at table when Bert went out, and the latter, desiring to accept Nate Leddy’s invitation to go canoeing, nevertheless listened to the voice of duty and waited in the corridor for his friend’s appearance. Ordway came out finally and Bert suggested that they take a stroll around the grounds. “Did you get enough feed?” he asked politely. “Yes, thanks. Awfully good chow, too, I think.” “Chow?” asked Bert. “Food, I meant. I say, Winslow, I wish you’d help me break myself of using――er――English expressions like that, you know. I want to talk like the rest of you chaps. Of course, I know a lot of American slang now, but I don’t seem to always get it in right, someway. Now what do you say for ‘chow’?” “‘Eats,’ I guess,” laughed Bert. “You’ll be talking like the rest of us quick enough. Don’t worry. Besides, what’s it matter?” “Well, a chap doesn’t like to seem _different_, if you know what I mean. And, anyway, I’m as much American as English.” “You’re not if you were born in England.” “Oh, I say, Winslow, a chap can’t control that! I might have been born in France, you know. Fact is, I came rather near it! But that wouldn’t have made me a Frenchie, eh?” “No, but your father’s English and you were born in England. That makes you a British citizen, doesn’t it?” “Oh, yes, but――――” He paused. Then, confidentially: “Fact is, Winslow, I’m awfully fond of this country, don’t you know, and as long as I’m going to be here at Grafton two years I’d like to――to be like the rest of you, if you know what I mean. Of course, I _am_ English. There’s no getting around that. But my mother’s American as anything. Her family has lived in Maryland for a hundred and fifty years, I think it is, and I always consider myself about half American, too. On the other side, now, they’re always taking me for a Yankee.”