glasses splintered into bits, and while the students were sitting down, I found myself growing more and more conspicuous until the seated throng looked up from every part of the room, to see me furiously red, with tears gathering, and with untold chagrin over the mishap. I waited, among the ruin, for Brock to come to me, get me by the scruff of the neck, hurl me outside to say, “Get back to the mill. What right have you to pretend to know how to act among cultured people? You’re too green!” I _imagined_, too, that the students at my table must be delegating one of their number to go to the head waiter to say, “We don’t want that clumsy person bothering with us. He’s spoiled a couple of fine dresses and made a regular bothersome mess. Throw him out! Send him back to where he came from!” But I had mistaken the temper of Evangelical University. Brock came down, and with great kindness patted me on the back and said, encouragingly, “Don’t let a thing like that bother you, Priddy. I know how they crowd. Cheer up, old fellow.” Then the student who had jolted the tray bent back and said, “It was all my fault, Brock. He wasn’t to blame a bit. It was downright careless of me. I’m sorry.” Then, after he had assisted me in bringing the hot water and other drinkables to the tables, Brock took pains to introduce me to the twenty young men and women, saying, “Mr. Priddy, I hope, will see that you do not go hungry as much as you might!” I walked on air after that; for the head waiter had called me, “Mr. Priddy!” _Chapter III. Thropper’s Puff Tie. Sounds That Passed in the Night. The Possible Advantages of Speaking Tubes. The Scroll of Divine History. The Meditations of a Saint. How Thropper Lost his Pious Reputation_ Shortly after my return from the dining-hall, Thropper thundered into the room, in his impetuous way, jerked his arms out of his coat, tore at his collar and lifted up the lid of his tin-covered trunk with every evidence of excitement. “What’s the matter--Jim?” I asked, from my seat near the window. “Got a date on, that’s what,” he answered, half smothered in his trunk. “Miss Ebberd’s going--church--with me. Lucky--duck, that’s what! Going down the board walk to--New Light revival! Say,” he interrupted, holding up for my inspection a black, puff tie, with an opal stone nesting in the midst of its folds, “How would this go with a choker collar, Priddy?” “Put it on first, Thropper,” I suggested. He fastened it around his high choker collar: a collar whose pointed fronts might have been successfully used by Spanish Inquisitors to make heretics look up continually unless they wished to have holes punctured under their chins. “The reason I wear this tie,” said Thropper, confidentially, “is because it blocks up my shirt bosom; hides it and saves washing, of course. You’ve got to get on to all those sort of tricks when you work your way through school, you’ll find, Priddy. Now, how do I look, eh?”