Those last three days of rushing were nerve-racking. At night the invited freshmen--and that meant about two thirds of the class--were at the fraternity houses until eleven; between classes and during every free hour they were accosted by earnest fraternity men, each presenting the superior merits of his fraternity. The fraternity men were wearier than the freshmen. They sat up until the small hours every morning discussing the freshmen they had entertained the night before. Hugh was in a daze. Over and over he heard the same words with only slight variations. A fraternity man would slap a fat book with an excited hand and exclaim: "This is 'Baird's Manual,' the final authority on fraternities, and it's got absolutely all the dope. You can see where we stand. Sixty chapters! You don't join just this one, y' understand; you join all of 'em. You're welcome wherever you go." Or, if the number of chapters happened to be small, "Baird's Manual" was referred to again. "Only fifteen chapters, you see. We don't take in new chapters every time they ask. We're darned careful to know what we're signing up before we take anybody in." The word "aristocratic" was carefully avoided, but it was just as carefully suggested. It seemed to Hugh that he was shown a photograph of every fraternity house in the country. "Look," he would be told by his host, "look at that picture to the right of the fireplace. That's our house at Cornell. Isn't it the darb? And look at that one. It's our house at California. Some palace. They've got sunken gardens. I was out there last year to our convention. The boys certainly gave us a swell time." All this through a haze of tobacco smoke and over the noise of a jazz orchestra and the chatter of a dozen similar conversations. Hugh was excited but not really interested. The Nu Deltas invited him to their house every evening, but they were not making a great fuss over him. Perhaps they weren't going to give him a bid.... Well, he'd go some other fraternity. No, he wouldn't, either. Maybe the Nu Delta's would bid him later after he'd done something on the track. Although actual pledging was not supposed to be done until Saturday night, Hugh was receiving what amounted to bids all that day and the night before. Several times groups of fraternity men got into a room, closed the door, and then talked to him until he was almost literally dizzy. He was wise enough not to make any promises. His invariable answer was: "I don't know yet. I won't know until Saturday night."