Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/174

 But of course the whole University knew about his second performance. Some of its members had witnessed it, and all of them had read about it, next day, in Churchton's four-page "Index."

The president's wife was a sprightly lady, who believed in keeping up the social end of things. Her Thursdays offered coffee and chocolate at a handsomely appointed table, and a little dancing, now and then, for the livelier of the young professors and the daughters of the town's best-known families; above all, she insisted on "receiving"—even on having a "receiving line." She would summon, for example, the wife of one of the most eminent members of the faculty and the obliging spouse of some educationally-minded banker or manufacturer; and she herself always stood, of course, at the head of her line. When Cope came along with Randolph, she intercepted the flow of material for her several assistants farther on, and carried congestion and impatience into the waiting queue behind by detaining him and "having it out."

She caught his hand with a good, firm, nervous grasp, and flashed on him a broad, meaningful smile.

"Which saved which?" she asked heartily.

Mrs. Ryder, who was farther along in the line, but not too far, beamed delightedly, yet without the slightest trace of malice. An eminent visiting educator, five or six steps behind our hero, frowned in question and had to have the situation explained by the lady in his company.

Cope, a trifle embarrassed, and half-inclined to