Meanwhile the young ladies sauntered along--before or behind, as the case
might be--in the company of the young business-man and that of another
youth who had come out independently on the trolley. They appeared to be
suitably accompanied and entertained. But shiftings and readjustments
ensued, as they are sure to do with a walking-party. Cope presently found
himself scuffling through the thin grass and the briery thickets alongside
the young business-man. He was a clever, companionable chap, but he
declared himself all too soon, even in this remote Arcadia, as utterly true
to type. Cope was not long in feeling him as operating on the unconscious
assumption--unconscious, and therefore all the more damnable--that the
young man in business constituted, ipso facto, a kind of norm by which
other young men in other fields of endeavor were to be gauged: the farther
they deviated from the standard he automatically set up, the more
lamentable their deficiencies. A few condescending inquiries as to the
academic life, that strange aberration from the normality of the practical
and profitable course which made the ordinary life of the day, and the
separation came.
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