They ranged in their years from about fifteen to
twenty and even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what
they could to repair the loss of university training before they took up
the work of life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the
seriousness with which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious
in everything as to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table
to themselves in our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always to
be having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of
one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything
could, the shining chill of the hostelry. In the evening we heard them
in the billiard-room below lifting their voices in the lays of our
college muse, and waking to ecstasy the living piano in the strains of
our national ragtime. They were never intrusively cheerful; one might
remain, in spite of them, as dispirited as the place would have one; but
as far as the _genius loci_ would let me, I liked them; and so far as I
made their acquaintance I thought that they were very intelligently
carrying out the enterprise imagined for them.
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