2. CHAPTER II.
Richt hardie baith in ernist and play.
— Sir David Lyndsay.
“Morton, what was the little old fogy in the white cravat
saying to you just now in the library?”
“Telling me that my father was a worthy man, and that he
hoped I should make just such another.”
“Ah, that was kind of him.”
“What a pile of books you are lugging! Here, let me
take half a dozen of them for you. You look as if you were
training to be a hotel porter.”
“I am laying in for vacation.”
“What sense is there in that? Let alone your Latin,
Greek, and mathematics; what the deuse is vacation made
for? Take to the woods, as I do, breathe the fresh air, and
see the world at large.”
“Do you call it seeing the world at large, to go off into
some barbarous, uninhabitable place, among mosquitoes,
snakes, wolves, bears, and catamounts? What sense is there
in that? What can you do when you get there?”
“Shoot muskrats, and fish for mudpouts. Will you go
with me?”
“Thank you, no. There's no one in the class featherwitted
enough to go with you, except Meredith, and he ought to
know better.”
“Stay at home, then, and improve your mind. I shall be
off to-morrow.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
Mr. Horace Vinal shrugged his shoulders, a movement
which caused Sophocles and Seneca to escape from under his
arm. Morton gathered them out of the mud, and thrusting
them back again into their place, left his burdened fellow-student
to make the best of his way towards his den in
Stoughton Hall.
