Endicott shrugged his shoulders half admiringly.
"Loyal to your old friends still? Well, that's commendable, but still I fancy you'll scarcely find them congenial now. I wouldn't let them hang too closely about you. They might become a nuisance. You have your way to make in the world, you know."
Michael looked at his benefactor with troubled brows. Somehow the tone of the man disturbed him.
"I promised," he said simply. Because there had bean so little in his affections that promise had been cherished through the years, and meant much to Michael. It stood for Principle and Loyalty in general.
"Oh, well, keep your promise, of course," said the man of the world easily. "I fancy you will find the discharge of it a mere form."
A fellow student came across the campus.
"Endicott," he called, "have you seen Hallowell go toward the village within a few minutes?"
"He just want, out the gate," responded Michael pleasantly.
Mr. Endicott looked up surprised.
"Is that the name by which you are known?"
"Endicott? Yes, sir, Michael Endicott. Was it not by your wish? I supposed they had asked you. I had no other name that I knew."
"Ah! I didn't know," pondered Endicott.
There was silence for a moment.
"Would you,--shall I--do you dislike my having it?" asked the boy delicately sensitive at once.
But the man looked up with something like tenderness in his smile.
"Keep it, son. I like it. I wish I had a boy like you. It is an old name and a proud one. Be worthy of it."
"I will try, sir," said Michael, as if he were registering a vow.
There was an early supper for the guests and then Michael walked through another sunset to the station with Starr. He carried a small box carefully prepared in which reposed a tiny green and blue lizard for a parting gift. She had watched the lizards scuttling away under the board sidewalks at their approach, or coming suddenly to utter stillness, changing their brilliant colors to gray like the fence boards that they might not be observed. She was wonderfully interested in them, and was charmed with her gift. The particular lizard in question was one that Michael had trained to eat crumbs from his hand, and was quite tame.
The two said little as they walked along together. Each was feeling what a happy time they had spent in one another's company.
"I shall write and tell you how the lizard is," said Starr laughing, "and you will tell me all about the funny and interesting things you are doing, won't you?"