“What does that mean?” inquired the father.  College was a mystery to him, a deeply respected mystery.  He had been the youngest of four sons.  Their mother’s dream was the dream of all the mothers of those pioneer and frontier days—­to send her sons to college.  Each son in turn had, with her assistance, tried to get together the sum—­so small, yet so hugely large—­necessary to make the start.  But fate, now as sickness, now as crop failure, now as flood, and again as war, had been too strong for them.  Hiram had come nearest, and his defeat had broken his mother’s heart and almost broken his own.  It was therefore with a sense of prying into hallowed mysteries that he began to investigate his son’s college career.

“Well, you know,” Arthur proceeded to explain; “there are five grades—­A, B, C, D, and E. I aimed for C, but several things came up—­interfered—­and I—­just missed D.”

“Is C the highest?”

Arthur smiled faintly.  “Well—­not in one sense.  It’s what’s called the gentleman’s grade.  All the fellows that are the right sort are in it—­or in D.”

“And what did you get?”

“I got E. That means I have to try again.”

Hiram began to understand.  So this was the hallowed mystery of higher education.  He was sitting motionless, his elbows on his knees, his big chest and shoulders inclined forward, his gaze fixed upon a wreath of red roses in the pattern of the moquette carpet—­that carpet upon which Adelaide, backed by Arthur, had waged vain war as the worst of the many, to cultured nerves, trying exhibitions of “primitive taste” in Ellen’s best rooms.  When Hiram spoke his lips barely opened and his voice had no expression.  His next question was:  “What does A mean?”

“The A men are those that keep their noses in their books.  They’re a narrow set—­have no ideas—­think the book side is the only side of a college education.”

“Then you don’t go to college to learn what’s in the books?”

“Oh, of course, the books are part of it.  But the real thing is association—­the friendships one makes, the knowledge of human nature and of—­of life.”

“What does that mean?”

Arthur had been answering Hiram’s questions in a flurry, though he had been glib enough.  He had had no fear that his father would appreciate that he was getting half-truths, or, rather, truths prepared skillfully for paternal consumption; his flurry had come from a sense that he was himself not doing quite the manly, the courageous thing.  Now, however, something in the tone of the last question, or, perhaps, some element that was lacking, roused in him a suspicion of depth in his simple unworldly father; and swift upon this awakening came a realization that he was floundering in that depth—­and in grave danger of submersion.  He shifted nervously when his father, without looking up and without putting any expression into his voice, repeated:  “What do you mean by associations—­and life—­and—­all that?”