she need not worry about that. He owed most of his to her, but he was going to earn now, and he hoped to be able to repay her—although, of course, he could never repay her for her kindness.
She was not to worry about Conroy. Everything would come out all right. They would look after each other. They had plenty of money.
And then, finding that he was repeating himself and arriving no nearer an end, he subscribed himself abruptly, "Your affectionate nephew," and was done.
He addressed his envelopes with a heavy apprehension of the grief and anxiety which they would bring to Coulton; but he consoled himself, in the hopefulness of youth, with the assurance that grief was a passing accident of life which would be forgotten in the rosy future to follow. He saw himself returning with Conroy to Coulton, for their Christmas holiday, with money in their pockets and success in their smiles; and he felt that the joy of such a reunion would more than compensate for the partings which were necessary to make it possible.
He spent his afternoon erasing his name from his college texts so that he might sell them second-hand, tearing up his note-books and papers, and packing his trunk. He underlined, in Emerson's Essays, the sentence: "One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail." He put the proof of Margaret's photograph between the first pages of the Essay on Love, tied up the volume with a shoe-string, and hid it in the bottom of his trunk beside the Bible which his mother had given him at Christmas. And
