whole-hearted pocket-handkerchief, and cried more to mop away.
As if there were no afternoon tea, no mob of Yale men in the streets,
no world full of people who might, if they pleased, see those tears and
understand. The girl. Herself. Crying. In a flash, by the
light of the happiness that was overwhelming, he found this other
happiness. He understood. The mad idea which had come back and back
to him out there in the West, which he had put down firmly, the idea
that she had cared too much and not too little on that Tap Day four
years ago--that idea was true. She did care. She cared still.
He knew it without a doubt. He sat on the men's shoulders in his
ridiculous clothes, and the heavens opened. Then the tumult and the
shouting died and they let the hero down, and to the rapid succession
of strong emotions came as a relief another emotion--enthusiasm.
They were cheering the president, on the point of bursting
themselves into fragments to do it, it seemed. There were two
hundred men behind the class banner, and each one was converting
what was convertible of his being into noise. Johnny McLean
turned to with a will and thundered into the volume of tone
which sounded over and over the two short syllables of a name
which to a Yale man's idea fits a cheer better than most.
The president stood quiet, under the heaped-up honors of a
brilliant career, smiling and steady under that delirious music
of his own name rising, winged with men's hearts, to the skies.
Then the band was playing again and they were marching off down the
street together, this wonderful class that knew how to turn earth
into heaven for a fellow who hadn't done much of a stunt anyhow,
this grand, glorious, big-hearted lot of chaps who would have done
much more in his place, every soul of them--so Johnny McLean's
thoughts leaped in time with his steps as they marched away.
And once or twice a terror seized him--for he was weak yet from