Tom gazed at the group before him. Henry Whitman, Assistant Professor of Economics at thirty, a member of Grave, was telling a story of an Italian in Whitmanville who, when he curled, used only the broadest Scotch. When Tom had met Henry in his ingenuous days he threatened to be overwhelmed by the calm indifference of Henry's manner. The Whitman Air, inherited from a line of distinguished forebears, all but swamped him. It was as perfect and finished as some smooth old bit of jade, and as hard; a "piece" to be carefully handled, admirable only to the initiated. Tom had not yet, in the course of his initiation, come to find it admirable, although he quite appreciated its authenticity. Harry's father, of the same name, had been one of the College's chief luminaries in the preceding Administration, known wherever Political Economy, as such, was known. _His_ father before him had produced the Whitman Woollen Mills, which supported Whitmanville, and though they were at present in the hands of an uncle and various cousins, their beneficent influence was obviously felt by Henry. Everything about him suggested comfort and nourishment. There was in his eye a look which implied intimacy with beagle-hunting in Derbyshire, and the way he used his hands positively suggested candle light at dinner. The knickerbockers that he wore gave out a delightful heathery smell, a smell which is at its best when mingled, as at present, with the smell of superior pipe tobacco. His stockings would naturally be objects of curiosity to anyone familiar with the Whitman Mills, just as the pearls around the neck of a famous jeweller's wife would be, or the soap in the tub of a famous soap-maker. They were, as a matter of fact, excellent stockings of the heaviest, woolliest kind, and Whitman had bought them a year and a half ago in Scotland, whither he had gone after his wife's death. He still wore a mourning band about his arm in her honour, and a black knitted tie; and there was every reason to believe that he would continue to do so another year and a half. For the Whitmans always had mourned hard.