He took Horace’s and stopped where the youths sat.
“You already got mine,” one said.
“Up there.”
“Where’s your check?” the conductor said.
“You never gave us any.
You got our tickets, though.
Mine was number—” he repeated a number glibly, in a frank, pleasant tone.
“Did you notice the number of yours, Shack?”
The second one repeated a number in a frank, pleasant tone.
“Sure you got ours.
Look and see.”
He began to whistle between his teeth, a broken dance rhythm, unmusical.
“Do you eat at Gordon hall?” the other said.
“No.
I have natural halitosis.”
The conductor went on.
The whistle reached crescendo, clapped off by his hands on his knees, ejaculating duh-duh-duh. Then he just squalled, meaningless, vertiginous; to Horace it was like sitting before a series of printed pages turned in furious snatches, leaving a series of cryptic, headless and tailless evocations on the mind.
“She’s travelled a thousand miles without a ticket.”
“Marge too.”
“Beth too.”
“Duh-duh-duh.”
“Marge too.”
“I’m going to punch mine Friday night.”
“Eeeeyow.”
“Do you like liver?”
“I cant reach that far.”
“Eeeeeyow.”
They whistled, clapping their heels on the floor to furious crescendo, saying duh-duh-duh.
The first jolted the seat back against Horace’s head.
He rose.
“Come on,” he said.
“He’s done gone.”
Again the seat jarred into Horace and he watched them return and join the group that blocked the aisle, saw one of them lay his bold, rough hand flat upon one of the bright, soft faces uptilted to them.
Beyond the group a countrywoman with an infant in her arms stood braced against a seat.
From time to time she looked back at the blocked aisle and the empty seats beyond.
At Oxford he descended into a throng of them at the station, hatless, in bright dresses, now and then with books in their hands and surrounded still by swarms of colored shirts.
Impassable, swinging hands with their escorts, objects of casual and puppyish pawings, they dawdled up the hill toward the college, swinging their little hips, looking at Horace with cold, blank eyes as he stepped off the walk in order to pass them.
At the top of the hill three paths diverged through a broad grove beyond which, in green vistas, buildings in red brick or gray stone gleamed, and where a clear soprano bell began to ring.
The procession became three streams, thinning rapidly upon the dawdling couples swinging hands, strolling in erratic surges, lurching into one another with puppyish squeals, with the random intense purposelessness of children.
The broader path led to the postoffice.
He entered and waited until the window was clear.
“I’m trying to find a young lady, Miss Temple Drake.
I probably just missed her, didn’t I?”
“She’s not here any longer,” the clerk said.
“She quit school about two weeks ago.”
He was young: a dull, smooth face behind horn glasses, the hair meticulous.
After a time Horace heard himself asking quietly:
“You dont know where she went?”
The clerk looked at him.
He leaned, lowering his voice: