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paneling and ancient-looking tables and chairs. Colonial utensils hung suspended from the ceiling—pots, pans, foot warmers, candle-molds and other weird cast-iron artifacts that Linda couldn’t identify. About seven or eight young men stood drinking beer or hard liquor at the bar. Couples occupied the tables, drinking, laughing, talking and singing.
    Joe led her to a booth and they sat down. From where she sat she could see the bar and the doorway. A waiter came and Joe said: “Two labels down.”
    She looked at him quizzically. The waiter disappeared and he smiled at her.
    “What did you say?”
    “Two labels down,” he repeated. “That means two 3.2 bottles of Carling’s Black Label.”
    “Why down?”
    “You’re not 21, are you?”
    She shook her head.
    “Down means 3.2; up means 6-point.”
    She nodded, understanding. A second or two later the waiter arrived with the beer and she poured herself a glassful. She sipped it and it was cold and good. Joe was saying something and she was answering him but most of the conversation was going over her head. She was too caught up in all that was new to concentrate on what was being said.
    It was only her second day at Clifton, and here she was drinking a beer at the tavern and sitting across from her date. She was enjoying herself, really enjoying herself, and all at once she knew with an overwhelming certainty that she was going to enjoy her stay at Clifton. It was a nice atmosphere, warm and friendly, and she found herself feeling very much at home in it.
    She looked up at the line of men at the bar and one of them in particular caught her attention. He was tall, with brown hair clipped close to his scalp in a crew cut and a goatee and mustache that matched his hair. At first glance the combination of crew cut and beard seemed ludicrous, but when she looked a second time they seemed to go together, as if they happened to fit this particular boy.
    He was drinking some sort of liquor, drinking it straight with beer for a chaser. He didn’t talk to anybody but at the same time he didn’t seem to be alone. He drank laconically, tossing the liquor down his throat and following it with a sip of the beer. There was an air of complete self-assurance about him. It said that he didn’t give a damn about anybody or anything.
    She watched him for awhile and Joe must have noticed because he stopped talking and looked at her.
    “Who’s that?” she asked.
    “Who?”
    “The fellow with the beard,” she said, pointing.
    He looked around for a second and turned back to her. “That’s Don Gibbs,” he said.
    “Who’s he?”
    “He edits the Record. You know—the college paper.”
    She nodded.
    “The first issue comes out Friday.”
    She nodded again. She knew that there was a school paper called The Clifton Record ; it was another of those pearls of information which the catalogue supplied to entering freshmen. And, when she looked again at the boy called Don Gibbs, it seemed very logical that he would be the editor. He looked like someone important.
    “I don’t like him,” Joe was saying.
    “Why not?”
    He shrugged. “I’m not sure. Nothing personal, exactly. Just a feeling. He seems phony, with that beard and all. Like he’s trying to prove something.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “Just phony.”
    She looked at Don Gibbs again, and this time she wanted to tell Joe that he was wrong, that the beard wasn’t phony, that nothing about this boy was phony. She didn’t know why but she felt that Don Gibbs was somebody very important, somebody who was going to be important to her. And as she thought about it Joe seemed to fade, as if he was just another pre-med student who would wind up going into his father’s practice and never being very interesting or particularly exciting.
    “Besides,” Joe said, “I don’t like the way he acts with women.”
    She looked at him, waiting for him to go on.
    “He thinks he’s a real hot-shot. He thinks he can … well, make