The snow was falling in big flakes, and Vag walked up Holyoke Street humming "White Christ man" softly to himself, for right now there wasn't much to worry about. Hour exams were far, far in the back of his memory, and fields-well finals were next year, Meanwhile there would be Christmas and perhaps a weekend or two of asking. It was a good time of the year.

It was a time for thinking after the autumn madness and before the mid-winter grand. Vag stopped fairly on the lift overing of show and thought of what the newspapers called his postwar readjustment. It had been made. Now he could sit calmly in his armchair and spend a straight afternoon reading a novel or textbook with a lot loss of the old restlessness. He was in the college life for what it was worth.

Cautiously Vag started to cross Massachusetts Avenue, then with an air of bravado, he dodged a taxi. A flake of snow hit, him in the eye. Direct hit, he said to himself, and though his eye watered he smiled expansively at nobody and continued across the Yard. Where was he walking to! Didn't he have to see someone at University Hall, or was it Lehman! Well, lot the big boys wait. He was taking a walk to think things over, to sum things up. The happiest days of his life, and perhaps in a way the least useful, that's what these days probably were. What did it matter; they'd be all over soon, and he'd have to start looking around for something to do.

That was where he had to go-Weld Hall, the placement bureau. He didn't want to be placed, not till June at any rate. Trees, snow, dying ivy, He would put off the placement people at least for a little while. College was here and now. Vag made a resolution to stop treasuring each month until June, for then he'd be prepared to face the outside. And he certainly wanted to-in June. Until then there was Christmas and asking and the spring months, Mission accomplished, thought Vag, standing at the Thayer Gate, so he turned around and started to walk back to the Houses.