III
THE PARTING
At the beginning of the sophomore year it came to Floyd's understanding that Stewart and Jim Hobart had been elected into a club; there they ate and sat, and did what studying seemed to them necessary. For the time being they seemed to Floyd, who was in training for football, to have withdrawn entirely from the rest of the college world. On Sundays he usually took luncheon with the Lees in Boston, and these were almost the only occasions when he saw his room-mate. Sometimes Stewart did not appear for this Sunday meal, having been at a club dinner in Cambridge the night before, and finding it necessary to send Floyd in to his mother with the most plausible invention he could command. So Floyd would sit alone with Mrs. Lee and Anna, and afterwards the little girl would call on him to perform tricks with a silver quarter; she no longer believed in them as she had done at first, but she never gave up trying to detect how he did them. They became very good friends, Mrs. Lee and Anna and the boy.
One afternoon in December, when Floyd was walking from the laboratory to his room, he heard his name called behind him, and turning saw Stewart.
"I have n't seen you for a dog's age," said Stewart, coming up and linking his arm in Floyd's, "and I can't stay but a moment with you now; I'm in an awful rush. What I want to know is, have you any engagement for next Friday night?"
"No," Floyd answered; "none."
"That's good; you would n't have been allowed to keep it if you had. We're arranging to get you good and sewed up that night—down at the club."
