Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/218

he was not glad. The Dean was symbolic; a sort of gateway between the University and the world. You approached him, a stripling, and you left him, a man. During that short half hour while you sat by his desk and listened to him and eyed the prophetic waggings of his head, you grew up. And there were growing-pains. . . .

He did not return to the fraternity house for awhile. Instead he chose an opposite direction, and walked aimlessly, down sidewalks grown so newly dear that objects he was wont to pass without a glance loomed up and beckoned to him. Here was the tree into which he and others had crashed in a stolen taxicab one long-ago larksome midnight. Here was the corner where he had stood and waited for a mysterious unknown "in a black hat with a big red flower, you can't miss it"—who never showed up. Here was the place where Piggy Wilde, the quarterback, had tripped on a loose brick and broken his collar bone the day before the big game. Here was the house of a professor who had tutored him, here a window he had shattered with a snowball, there a freshman dorm where he had lived. And over there, the Fence, the long wooden railing grooved with the penknives of the legions who had come . . . and romped and laughed a halcyon little while . . . and then gone on, as he was going.

A Ford lurched past him. Full of legs. Straight handsome boy-legs protruded at all angles. Voices were lifted in song, and the legs swayed in the air like batons to the beat of it. While Jock still watched, the Ford stopped. The song stopped. The legs stopped, disappeared, were replaced in a jiffy by upreared heads and torsos. Figures spilled on to the street over the sides. The Ford went forward again,