Nathan looked through what his father had so dramatically enclosed: A lock of Edith’s baby hair tied with a tiny pink ribbon; a small tintype of himself and Anna Forge taken at some street fair back in the Nineties; two snapshots of Nathan taken the year before moving to Paris from Foxboro Center; a picture postcard of Main Street, Paris—lacking none of the features which had so depressed Madelaine Theddon—a newspaper clipping containing the first of Nathan’s poems copied by the _Sunday Globe_—the cablegram of Nathan’s last message as Johnathan had received it in Japan. Nathan soaked a half a doughnut in his lukewarm tea as the pathetic assortment lay before him. Then he read his father’s letter again and smiled. He had to smile. He gathered up the envelope’s contents a quarter of an hour later. He jogged them together and for want of interest and a better place, slipped them between an ammonia bottle and the wall at the end of the shelf above the kitchen sink. Next noontime Johnathan Hadley Forge, in the lowest depths of hell, was smeared with copious gobs of whisker-flecked lather from Nathan’s razor. Nothing else being handy at the moment, Nathan used the letter for shaving paper! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER VI INFINITE PATIENCE I It was the day of the Harvard-Pennsylvania boat race. Madelaine Theddon had come from Boston to cheer for the crimson. Gordon met her and after the races off Court Square they went to The Worthy for dinner. Springfield was holding open house whether it wanted to hold open house or no. Groups of college boys paraded the streets. Banners were rampant; bands played. In early evening large numbers of Harvard undergrads descended upon The Worthy dining room and commandeered the place for their personal mess hall. It was a hilarious, happy, boisterous crowd,—and atmosphere. In another year the grim hand of war would grip the vitals of the nation. Let academic masculinity eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow most of it would be slopping in trench water or dodging shrapnel. Madelaine and Gordon had entered the room early. They had secured a table beside one of the Worthington Street windows. The day died and evening came. The air was balmy and the windows were open. Madelaine felt light-hearted. The vacation was welcome and she abandoned herself to that carnival spirit.