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Most objectionable sounds came from the room constantly: the Gang's songs, suggestive laughter, imitations of cats and fowls and fog-horns. These noises were less ingenious, however, than the devices of the Gang for getting rid of tobacco-smoke, such as blowing the smoke up the stove. Carl was happy. In this room he encouraged stammering Genie Linderbeck to become adaptable.
Toward the top a man was to be seen crouched in a pebbly, sunny arroyo, peering across the bleak prairie, a lone watcher. Ascending, Carl saw that it was Eugene Field Linderbeck, a Plato freshman. That amused him. He grinningly planned a conversation. Every one said that "Genie Linderbeck was queer."
"Well, young man, so you are going to let us know how to run Plato," teetered the president. "I'm sure everybody will feel much obliged to you." Carl did not move. He was aware of Genie Linderbeck rising, to his left. No one else was up, but, with Genie's frail adherence, Carl suddenly desired to rouse every one to stand for Frazer and freedom.
Carl, catching echoes of his own talks with Bone Stillman in the lecture, exultantly glanced about, and found the class staring at one another with frightened anxiety. He saw the grim Plain Smith, not so much angry as ill. He saw two class clowns snickering at the ecstasy in the eyes of Genie Linderbeck.
Carl was hating himself for ever having teased Genie Linderbeck. "You've helped me a thundering lot whenever I've asked you about that blame Greek syntax. I guess we're jealous of you. You uh you don't want to let 'em kid you " Carl was embarrassed before Genie's steady, youthful, trusting gaze.
It looked so intimidatingly public that he tried to forget it was there. He chuckled when he thought of Plain Smith and Genie Linderbeck as "concerned in student pranks." But he was growing angry. He considered staying and fighting his opponents to the end.
While waiting with Genie Linderbeck for the Frazers to come down, Carl found in a rack on the oak table such books as he had never seen: exquisite books from England, bound in terra-cotta and olive-green cloth with intricate gold designs, heavy-looking, but astonishingly light to the hand; books about Celtic legends and Provençal jongleurs, and Japanese prints and other matters of which he had never heard; so different from the stained text-books and the shallow novels by brisk ladies which had constituted his experiences of literature that he suddenly believed in culture.
There was an audience of sixty-four in Lecture-room A earnest girl students bringing out note-books and spectacle-cases, frivolous girls feeling their back hair, and the men settling down with a "Come, let's get it over!" air, or glowing up worshipingly, like Eugene Field Linderbeck, or determined not to miss anything, like Carl the captious college audience, credulous as to statements of fact and heavily unresponsive to the spirit.
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