Harvard University -- Fiction; Love stories; Plantations -- Virginia -- Fiction; Youth -- Fiction
“I see.” John drew his feet off the cushion and sat up. “On second
thoughts, Phil, I’m not sure that I won’t accept your invitation now.
At any rate, you might sound your folks and see what they think of
entertaining a stranger for a couple of days.”
“But you’re not exactly a stranger, you know,” said Phillip.
“Thank you, old man. What do you say to a short walk?”
So they strolled through the Yard, across the Delta and down Divinity
Avenue under arching boughs, bare save for an occasional yellow leaf
twirling lazily about in the afternoon breeze. They crossed Norton’s
Field, rustling through the little patch of woodland, and turned back
by Irving Street, pausing to admire the park-like expanse whereon
are grouped four highly satisfactory examples of public building
architecture. John pointed out the high school and the Latin school,
and the public library on one side and the manual training school on
the other, and Phillip looked them over for a minute and then said:
“Now I understand why you folks here in New England are so intellectual
and cultured and all that. Shucks! You can’t help being smart and
knowing a heap with all your fine schools and libraries and things.
Considering the advantages you have, I’m not sure you’re not all
powerful ignorant. Why, a fellow couldn’t help learning how to
carpenter in a place like that!” He nodded toward the hospitable red
brick building beside them. “Come on; I’m disgusted with you. You’re a
stupid lot up here. As my nigger mammy used to say, ‘You ain’t got as
much sense as a toad-frog; an’ ev’ybody knows that a toad-frog’s th’
ignerantes’ thing as is!’”
At the Colonial Club John piloted Phillip upstairs to the big,
comfortable and unpretentious reading-room where, over a pot of tea
and through the gray smoke of a couple of very black cigars, they
discussed subjects as multifarious and inconsequent as those suggested
by the walrus.
Phillip did not encounter Everett Kingsford until Monday night,
at the dinner table. Phillip looked sheepish, and Everett, rising
ceremoniously, saluted him gravely.
“Sir, I will apologize if you will,” he said.
“I didn’t recognize you at all,” declared Phillip earnestly. “I didn’t
know it was you until North told me yesterday. I’m awfully sorry,
honestly.”
“Say no more. But let this be a warning to you never to raise your hand
to your elders again.”
“You――you weren’t hurt, were you?” asked Phillip anxiously. The thought
of having engaged in combat with Betty’s brother was harrowing and
savoured of sacrilege.
“Not a bit. How about you?”
“Nor I.” Presently he asked: “Your mother is well, I hope?”
“Quite.” And Kingsford grinned exasperatingly. “And so is Miss Wayland,
I believe; and Muir. And so am I.”
Phillip applied himself diligently to his soup and strove to look
unconcerned.
“Isn’t soup a beautiful thing?” asked Kingsford.
Phillip smiled in spite of himself.
“You’re mighty cute, aren’t you?” he asked scathingly.
“So-so; at least, I know the symptoms.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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