Hugh was pleased and blushed. "You're full of bull.... Remember, we do Latin at ten to-morrow." He opened the door. "Good night." "Good night." And Hugh heard as he closed the door. "Thanks a lot." When he opened his own door, he found Carl sitting before a blazing log fire. There was no other light in the room. Carl had written his nightly letter to the "old lady," and he was a little homesick himself--softened into a tender and pensive mood. He did not move as Hugh sat down in a big chair on the other side of the hearth and said softly, "Thinking?" "Un-huh. Where you been?" "Across the hall in Morse's room." Then as Carl looked up in surprise, he told him of his experience with their red-headed neighbor. "He'll get over it," he concluded confidently. "He's just been lonely." Carl puffed contemplatively at his pipe for a few minutes before replying. Hugh waited, watching the slender boy stretched out in a big chair before the fire, his ankles crossed, his face gentle and boyish in the ruddy, flickering light. The shadows, heavy and wavering, played magic with the room; it was vast, mysterious. "No," said Carl, pausing again to puff his pipe; "no, he won't get over it. He'll go home." "Aw, shucks. A big guy like that isn't going to stay a baby all his life." Hugh was frankly derisive. "Soon as he gets to know a lot of fellows, he'll forget home and mother." Carl smiled vaguely, his eyes dreamy as he gazed into the hypnotizing flames. The mask of sophistication had slipped off his face; he was pleasantly in the control of a gentle mood, a mood that erased the last vestige of protective coloring. He shook his head slowly. "You don't understand, Hugh. Morse is sick, _sick_--not lonesome. He's got something worse than flu. Nobody can stand what he's got." Hugh looked at him in bewilderment. This was a new Carl, some one he hadn't met before. Gone was the slang flippancy, the hard roughness. Even his voice was softened. Carl knocked his pipe empty on the knob of an andiron, sank deeper into his chair, and began to speak slowly. "I think I'm going to tell you a thing or two about myself. We've got to room together, and I--well, I like you. You're a good egg, but you don't get me at all. I guess you've never run up against anybody like me before." He paused. Hugh said nothing, afraid to break into Carl's mood. He was intensely curious. He leaned forward and watched Carl, who was staring dreamily into the fire.