Vag relaxed, looked up from the mass of unanswered registration questions and allowed his eyes to adjust for more distant vision. He gazed again at the stained glass windows of the Gothic Barn, and then lowered his eyes to the endless sea of registrants around him. Vag had never registered in Summer School before, and the adult multitude dotted here and there with gray-haired ladies seemed rather odd to him. Schoolteachers, he told himself. Uncounted multitudes of more schoolteachers as far as the eye could reach, with vistas of more schoolteachers beyond, to the very confines of Memorial Hall. There was a young, slender one, pretty, but wide-eyed and idealistic. Probably a teacher of modern languages in some high school. And a plumpish one opposite her, with sad blue eyes set in a still young face, but with a few long gray hairs. Just beginning to realize that she's never going to get married, Vag thought. Vag knew from his days in the seventh grade what she would get to be like some day, and he glanced around for a resigned and sharp-eyed example of the final type.

There was a tall, thin cynic in the early thirties there also, with his little blonde mustache twisted into a habitual sneer. A junior high school general science teacher, no doubt. The Vagabond mused sympathetically upon this probably frustrated soul and his inner struggles. He had never wanted to teach general science to squeamish thirteen-year-old girls and still-juvenile boys. Vag was sure of that; nobody could possibly want such a job. But when it fell in his path, there hadn't been much for an indifferent, unemployed, distinctly mediocre college graduate to do but accept it. He hadn't meant to stick to it for more than a year or two, "only until he found something else." But when he was put on permanent tenure after three years with a slight increase in his slight pay, the dreams of better jobs and bossy executive positions began to grow increasingly vague. Especially since there was now a mediocre wife and two mediocre kids. But it must be tough, Vag felt, to have no one to take it out on but a bunch of dumb pupils who didn't appreciate how great he really could have been if he had only had some breaks or had the time.

He spotted a timid little fellow, with tiny sprouts under his nose, and nervous eyes behind rimless glasses. This was the spitting image of Mr. Pettengill, the most learned and conscientious teacher in Central Junior High, and the easiest, too, Vag reminisced fondly. Wanted to be a big professor some day, but just couldn't get placed, somehow.

"This is awful," the Vagabond mumbled suddenly, and began racing through the rest of the registration blanks.