"All right," said Story, with a quick look. "Drop in soon." The following night Stover again went over to Swazey's rooms. It being Saturday, one or two men had dropped in: Ricketts, a down-East Yankee who recited in his divisions, a drawling, shuffling stripling with a lazy, overgrown body and a quick, roving eye; Joe Lake, a short, rolling, fluent Southerner from Texas; and Bud Brown, from a small village in Michigan, one of the class debaters who affected a Websterian deportment. "I brought my pipe along," said Stover genially. "Got a place left where I can stow myself? Hello, Ricketts. Hello, Lake. Glad to shake your hand, Brown. How's the old _News_ getting along, Pike? By the way, I'll give you a story Monday." "Right in here, sir," said Lake, making room. A couple of stout logs were roaring in the fireplace, before which, propped up with cushions, the majority of the company were sprawling. Stover took his place, filling his pipe. His arrival brought a little constraint; the conversation, which had been at fever pitch as he stood rapping at the door, dwindled to desultory remarks on inconsequential things. "Well, I certainly am among the fruits of the class," thought Stover, eyeing the rather shaggy crowd, where sweaters and corduroys predominated and the razor had passed not too frequently. In the midst of this hesitation, Regan's heavy frame crowded the doorway, accompanied by Brockhurst. Both were surprised at Stover's unaccustomed presence, Brockhurst looking at him with a little suspicion, Regan shaking his hand with new cordiality. "Have you, too, joined the debating circle?" he said, crowding into a place by Stover and adjusting the fire with a square-toed boot. "Debating circle?" said Stover, surprised. "Why, this is the verbal prize ring of the college," said Regan, laughing. "We settle everything here, from the internal illnesses of the university to the external manifestations of the universe. Pike can tell you everything that is going to happen in the next fifty years, and so can Brocky--only they don't agree. I'm around to get them out of clinches." "Reckon you get rather heated up yourself, sometimes, Tom," said Lake. "Oh, I jump in myself when I get tired of listening." Swazey, Lake, Ricketts, and Brown in one corner installed themselves for a session at the national game, appropriating the lamps, and leaving the region about the fireplace to be lit by occasional gleams from the fitful hickories. Brockhurst, the champion of individualism, was soon launched on his favorite topic. "The great fault of the American nation, which is the fault of republics, is the reduction of everything to the average. Our universities are simply the expression of the forces that are operating outside. We are business colleges purely and simply, because we as a nation have only one ideal--the business ideal." "That's a big statement," said Regan.