But he was not fated to escape so easily. On his melancholy walk to the railroad station he found that he was being followed by a group, then by a swarm, and finally by a dense mass of undergraduates. The word had gone around that a lunatic had passed the entrance examinations for Yale and attempted to palm himself off as a youth of eighteen. A fever of excitement permeated the college. Men ran hatless out of classes, the football team abandoned its practice and joined the mob, professors’ wives with bonnets awry and bustles out of position, ran shouting after the procession, from which proceeded a continual succession of remarks aimed at the tender sensibilities of Benjamin Button. “He must be the wandering Jew!” “He ought to go to prep school at his age!” “Look at the infant prodigy!” “He thought this was the old men’s home.” “Go up to Harvard!” Benjamin increased his gait, and soon he was running. He would show them! He _would_ go to Harvard, and then they would regret these ill-considered taunts! Safely on board the train for Baltimore, he put his head from the window. “You’ll regret this!” he shouted. “Ha-ha!” the undergraduates laughed. “Ha-ha-ha!” It was the biggest mistake that Yale College had ever made.... V In 1880 Benjamin Button was twenty years old, and he signalised his birthday by going to work for his father in Roger Button & Co., Wholesale Hardware. It was in that same year that he began “going out socially”--that is, his father insisted on taking him to several fashionable dances. Roger Button was now fifty, and he and his son were more and more companionable--in fact, since Benjamin had ceased to dye his hair (which was still grayish) they appeared about the same age, and could have passed for brothers. One night in August they got into the phaeton attired in their full-dress suits and drove out to a dance at the Shevlins’ country house, situated just outside of Baltimore. It was a gorgeous evening. A full moon drenched the road to the lustreless colour of platinum, and late-blooming harvest flowers breathed into the motionless air aromas that were like low, half-heard laughter. The open country, carpeted for rods around with bright wheat, was translucent as in the day. It was almost impossible not to be affected by the sheer beauty of the sky--almost. “There’s a great future in the dry-goods business,” Roger Button was saying. He was not a spiritual man--his aesthetic sense was rudimentary. “Old fellows like me can’t learn new tricks,” he observed profoundly. “It’s you youngsters with energy and vitality that have the great future before you.” Far up the road the lights of the Shevlins’ country house drifted into view, and presently there was a sighing sound that crept persistently toward them--it might have been the fine plaint of violins or the rustle of the silver wheat under the moon.