“I have been waitin’ fer you,” said Jason.  “Miss Hilda told me to come straight to you.”

“That’s right—­how is she?”

“She ain’t well—­she works too hard.”

The school-master shook his head with grave concern.

“I know.  You’ve been lucky, Jason.  She is the best woman on earth.”

“I’d lay right down here an’ die fer her right now,” said the lad soberly.  So would John Burnham, and he loved the lad for saying that.

“She said you was the best man on earth—­but I knowed that,” the lad went on simply; “an’ she told me to tell you to make me keep out o’ fights and study hard and behave.”

“All right, Jason,” said Burnham with a smile.  “Have you matriculated yet?”

Jason was not to be caught napping.  His eyes gave out the quick light of humor, but his face was serious.

“I been so busy waitin’ fer you that I reckon I must ‘a’ forgot that.”

The school-master laughed.

“Come along.”

Through the thick crowd that gave way respectfully to the new professor, Jason followed across the road to the building opposite, and up the steps into a room where he told his name and his age, and the name of his father and mother, and pulled from his pooket a little roll of dirty bills.  There was a fee of five dollars for “janitor”; Jason did not know what a janitor was, but John Burnham nodded when he looked up inquiringly and Jason asked no question.  There was another fee for “breakage,” and that was all, but the latter item was too much for Jason.

“S’pose I don’t break nothin’,” he asked shrewdly, “do I git that back?”

Then registrar and professor laughed.

“You get it back.”

Down they went again.

“That’s a mighty big word fer such little doin’s,” the boy said soberly, and the school-master smiled.

“You’ll find just that all through college now, Jason, but don’t wait to find out what the big word means.”

“I won’t,” said Jason, “next time.”

Many eyes now looked on the lad curiously when he followed John Burnham back through the crowd to the steps, where the new professor paused.

“I passed Mavis on the road.  I wonder if she has come.”

“I don’t know,” said Jason, and a curious something in his tone made John Burnham look at him quickly—­but he said nothing.

“Oh well,” he said presently, “she knows what to do.”

A few minutes later the two were alone in the new professor’s recitation-room.

“Have you seen Marjorie and Gray?”

The lad hesitated.

“I seed—­I saw ’em when they come in.”

“Gray finishes my course this year.  He’s going to be a civil engineer.”

“So’m I,” said Jason; and the quick shortness of his tone again made John Burnham look keenly at him.

“You know a good deal about geology already—­are you going to take my course too?”