I was like a horse. Now I have it easy, an’ I take time to t’ink about all dem t’ings.”
St. Peter laughed. “We all come to it, Applehoff. That’s one thing I’m renting your house for, to have room to think. Good morning.”
Crossing the public park, on his way back to the old house, he espied his professional rival and enemy, Professor Horace Langtry, taking a Sunday morning stroll—very well got up in English clothes he had brought back from his customary summer in London, with a bowler hat of unusual block and a horn-handled walking-stick. In twenty years the two men had scarcely had speech with each other beyond a stiff “good morning.” When Langtry first came to the university he looked hardly more than a boy, with curly brown hair and such a fresh complexion that the students called him Lily Langtry. His round pink cheeks and round eyes and round chin made him look rather like a baby grown big. All these years had made little difference, except that his curls were now quite grey, his rosy cheeks even rosier, and his mouth dropped a little at the corners, so that he looked like a baby suddenly grown old and rather cross about it.
Seeing St. Peter, the younger man turned abruptly into a side alley, but the Professor overtook him.
“Good morning, Langtry. These elms are becoming real trees at last. They’ve changed a good deal since we first came here.”
Doctor Langtry moved his rosy chin sidewise over his high double collar. “Good morning, Doctor St. Peter. I really don’t remember much about the trees. They seem to be doing well now.”
St. Peter stepped abreast of him. “There have been many changes, Langtry, and not all of them are good. Don’t you notice a great difference in the student body as a whole, in the new crop that comes along every year now—how different they are from the ones of our early years here?”