“You must get Mrs. Pasmer to let me show you all of Class Day that a Senior can.  I didn’t know what a perfect serpent’s tooth it was to be one before.  Mrs. Saintsbury,” he broke off, “have you got tickets for the Tree?  Ah, she doesn’t hear me!”

Mrs. Saintsbury was just then saying to the elder Mavering, “I’m so glad you decided to come today.  It would have been a shame if none of you were here.”  She made a feint of dropping her voice, with a glance at Dan Mavering.  “He’s such a nice boy,” which made him laugh, and cry out—­

“Oh, now?  Don’t poison my father’s mind, Mrs. Saintsbury.”

“Oh, some one would be sure to tell him,” retorted the Professor’s wife, “and he’d better hear it from a friend.”

The young fellow laughed again, and then he shook hands with some ladies going out, and asked were they going so soon, from an abstract hospitality, apparently, for he was not one of the hosts; and so turned once more to Miss Pasmer.  “We must get away from here, or the afternoon will get away from us, and leave us nothing to show for it.  Suppose we make a start, Miss Pasmer?”

He led the way with her out of the vestibule, banked round with pots of palm and fern, and down the steps into the glare of the Cambridge sunshine, blown full, as is the case on Class Day, of fine Cambridge dust, which had drawn a delicate grey veil over the grass of the Gymnasium lawn, and mounted in light clouds from the wheels powdering it finer and finer in the street.  Along the sidewalks dusty hacks and carriages were ranged, and others were driving up to let people dismount at the entrances to the college yard.  Within the temporary picket-fences, secluding a part of the grounds for the students and their friends, were seen stretching from dormitory to dormitory long lines of Chinese lanterns, to be lit after nightfall, swung between the elms.  Groups of ladies came and went, nearly always under the escort of some student; the caterers’ carts, disburdened of their ice-creams and salads, were withdrawn under the shade in the street, and their drivers lounged or drowsed upon the seats; now and then a black waiter, brilliant as a bobolink in his white jacket and apron, appeared on some errand; the large, mild Cambridge policemen kept the entrances to the yard with a benevolent vigilance which was not harsh with the little Irish children coming up from the Marsh in their best to enjoy the sight of other people’s pleasure.

“Isn’t it a perfect Class Day?” cried young Mavering, as he crossed Kirkland Street with Miss Pasmer, and glanced down its vaulted perspective of elms, through which the sunlight broke, and lay in the road in pools and washes as far as the eye reached.  “Did you ever see anything bluer than the sky to-day?  I feel as if we’d ordered the weather, with the rest of the things, and I had some credit for it as host.  Do make it a little compliment, Miss Pasmer; I assure you I’ll be very modest about it.”