"Spirit of youth," he whispered, "to you I dedicate myself, such as I am, and my life, such as it may be."
He stood still for a moment and listened as the great chorus behind the closed door brought the song to a finish, ending on a note both solemn and exalted. For a second or two there was silence, and then there burst forth the sound of the Yale cheer. The contrast between the last notes of the song and the brazen bellow of that cheer, hallowed by the memories of a hundred close-fought fields, struck Harry as both dramatic and comic, and caused a corresponding change in his own mood.
"Spirit of youth, alive, unchanging!" he quoted again, laughing. Then he hurried off to say good-by to his aunt.
Madge Elliston lived alone with her mother in a small house on an unpretentious but socially unimpeachable side street, just off one of the main avenues. Their means, as Madge has already intimated, were modest--"modest," as the young lady sprightly put it, "to the point of prudishness." Joseph Elliston, her father, had been a brilliant and promising young professor when her mother married him, with, as people said, a career before him. If by career they meant affluence, they were wholly right in saying it was all before him. But though the two married on his prospects, they could not fairly have been said to have made an unwise venture. Nothing but death had kept Joseph Elliston from becoming a popular and respected teacher, a foremost authority on economics, the author of standard works on that subject, and the possessor of a comfortable income. But he had died when Madge, his only child, was five years old, leaving his small and sorrowing family barely enough to live on.
The straitened circumstances in which the sad event threw Mrs. Elliston and her daughter were somewhat relieved by the generosity of the only sister of the widow, Eliza Scharndorst, herself a widow and the possessor of a large fortune. She was extremely fond of Madge, who always got on beautifully with her "Aunt Tizzy"--an infantile corruption allowed to survive into maturity--having more in common with her, if the truth must be known, than with her mother. She was a festive soul, much given to entertaining, and she was not long in discovering that the assistance of her niece was a distinct asset in making her home attractive to guests. It is not to be wondered at that Madge's occasional services in the way of decorating a dinner table or brightening up an otherwise stodgy reception would redound to her material benefit as well as to her spiritual welfare. Such good things as trips to Bermuda, occasional new frocks and instruction under the best music masters, came her way so frequently that by the time we next meet her, nearly five years after our last sight of her, Madge was a far better dowered young woman, socially speaking, than the penniless orphaned daughter of a college professor could normally hope to be.