Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/313



, after a few days, followed his parents back to Freeford. He may have said good-bye to his landlady and to some of his associates in his department; but he contrived no set adieux for the friends who had done so much for him—or had tried to—through the past year. Basil Randolph and Medora Phillips had their last view of him when, diploma in hand, he led his parents away, over the campus.

"Oh, well," said Randolph resignedly, "we were less important to him than we thought. Only a couple of negligible items among many. Entered in his ledger—if we were entered—and now faded away to a dim, rusty, illegible scrawl "

"Stop it, Basil! You make me feel old, antique, antediluvian. I don't want to. I shan't let myself be pushed back and ignored. I'm going to give Amy and George a rousing big dinner before long; and when the fall term opens I shall entertain as never before. And if that young man from the South turns up here during the summer to see Hortense, I shall do a lot for them."

Hortense Dunton had long since returned, of course, from the Tennessee and North Carolina mountains; but she ignored the convocation. One drop of