Vag pulled the letter out of his typewriter and read it over. "Dear draft board," it said, "please send me my deferment per President Truman's order of April first." It was a good letter, thought Vag, tight and to the point. He found an envelope under a pile of Coop bills in the top drawer of his desk, slipped in the letter, and took a stamp from the top of his roommate's bureau. Then he went out the door of the entry, into the tentative brightness of the sun, and across the quad to the mailbox. He stood for a minute reading the little card with its list of collection times, then he dropped the letter in and heard the hollow slap as it hit the bottom of the box.

It was a good afternoon for pinball, decided Vag, as he went out of the house and up the street. There was time for pinball now, lots of time; no more standing in line at the recruiting offices and filling in the dotted lines on the forms. For the last six months he had filled out those forms. He had saluted his roommate in the mornings and squirmed when the ROTC men walked through the Yard on Monday afternoon, and in the fall he had started thinking that it was the last football game, the last jolly-up, and just a week ago the last hour exam had disappeared into the cold finality of a blue-book.

Now it was all changed. Vag looked in at the pinball machines and suddenly felt the sun on his neck, and decided that it was no time for pinball after all. This was an afternoon for walking, a spring afternoon, a free afternoon with no draft board to bother it and no sergeant standing there somewhere past the brightness of the sun. Vag walked up the street, holding himself very crect; he passed a man in an Air Force uniform, and said "doorman" very quietly to himself.

Then he saw the store window. It was cluttered with plaids and striped ties, but in one corner there was a neat sign that said, "Genuine Chino Trousers." Vag stopped and looked at the trousers, smooth and careful as they hung in the window, then he turned and went into the store. It would be getting warmer, thought Vag, and the way things stood now, at least, a couple of pairs of cheap GI pants might be pretty hard to come by.