They were slightly bony, perhaps; "but then," as she told
herself, "he is still quite young. Who would want him anything but
slender?--even spare, if need be."
As they sat there together,--she plying him with questions and he, restored
to good humor, replying or parrying with an unembarrassed exuberance,--a
man who stood just within the curtained doorway and flicked a small graying
moustache with the point of his forefinger took in the scene with a
studious regard. Every small educational community has its scholar
_manque_--its haunter of academic shades or its intermittent dabbler
in their charms; and Basil Randolph held that role in Churchton. No alumnus
himself, he viewed, year after year, the passing procession of
undergraduates who possessed in their young present so much that he had
left behind or had never had at all, and who were walking, potentially,
toward a promising future in which he could take no share. Most of these
had been commonplace young fellows enough--noisy, philistine, glaringly
cursory and inconsiderate toward their elders; but a few of them--one now
and then, at long intervals--he would have enjoyed knowing, and knowing
intimately.
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