Neale chewed his pen hard. How hard it was to have things out with a father! When a man takes it for granted that if you don't want to go to college you must want to be a bank-clerk or sell shoes, how are you to make him understand anything about Freedom and the Open Road and Comradeship and Vagabondia, distant countries and ships that smell of tar and salt like the wharves. How could a man in a three-button, pepper-and-salt cut-away understand? A man who wore a derby hat and went to his office in the city every day? And Father was getting fat, too, the three-button cut-away was heavily rounded. No--all that was in another world. There weren't any words to express any of it to a Father. So he said nothing, jabbing his pen into the blotting paper. Presently Father went on, "Of course, I should like to have you go to my old college, Williams, but Mother feels--we both feel--that it would be a pity to break up the family circle. What would you think of Columbia? They say since it has moved up to Morningside Heights there is more college life--and of course it's one of the leading Universities...." Another pause, so long that Neale felt bound to say something. "Oh, I guess I would like Columbia as well as any," he finally brought out. Father looked at him several minutes. Then he stood up, "We needn't settle it to-night, of course. Think it over; we'll talk it over again." But of course they never did. They never talked anything over. The subject was not raised again. Nevertheless it was somehow understood in the family that Neale was going to enter Columbia. And Neale made no protest. To tell the truth, as spring advanced and all his classmates began talking over their plans for next year, the uniformity of having a recognized respectable destination was not disagreeable. It saved talk, and useless talk about his affairs was one of the things Neale detested. Till he could be really independent and do as he liked without suffering the ignominy of having people know about it and talk him over, it might be better just to slide along the grooves provided, get the usual labels stuck on you. It couldn't do you any harm. They'd soak off easy enough, later on. CHAPTER XV With June came examinations at Hadley. Long, long experience and concentration on the subject had taught Hadley administrators exactly how to time their training so that when examinations came, the boys would be in the pink of condition. Two weeks later they would be stale, horribly, sickeningly stale, but nobody at Hadley cared a continental what happened two weeks after examinations. That was no business of theirs. Weary, but still docilely answering the crack of the ring-master's questions, the thoroughly disciplined Troupe of Trained Boys went through subject after subject, with the automatic rear and plunge of circus-riders breaking paper hoops. That was all right. Those were only the Hadley examinations. They expected to be able to pass those.