until at last we came. Then Brownie crept back to the dormitory, too exhausted to enjoy the
carnival at all. On this day of high illegal competitiveness, no one noticed.
The buried cider was half-consciously plotted at the hub of the carnival. Around it sprang up
large, sloppy statues, easily modeled because of the snow’s dampness. Nearby, entirely out of
place in this snowscape, like a dowager in a saloon, there was a heavy circular classroom table,
carried there by superhuman exertions the night before on Finny’s insistence that he had to have
something to display the prizes on. On it rested the prizes—Finny’s icebox, hidden all these
months in the dormitory basement, a Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary with all the most
stimulating words marked, a set of York barbells, the Iliad with the English translation of each
sentence written above it, Brinker’s file of Betty Grable photographs, a lock of hair cut under
duress from the head of Hazel Brewster, the professional town belle, a handwoven rope ladder
with the proviso that it should be awarded to someone occupying a room on the third floor or
higher, a forged draft registration card, and $4.13 from the Headmaster’s Discretionary
Benevolent Fund. Brinker placed this last prize on the table with such silent dignity that we all
thought it was better not to ask any questions about it.
Phineas sat behind the table in a heavily carved black walnut chair; the arms ended in two lions’
heads, and the legs ended in paws gripping wheels now sunk in the snow. He had made the
purchase that morning. Phineas bought things only on impulse and only when he had the money,
and since the two states rarely coincided his purchases were few and strange.
Chet Douglass stood next to him holding his trumpet. Finny had regretfully given up the plan of
inviting the school band to supply music, since it would have spread news of our carnival to
every corner of the campus. Chet in any case was an improvement over that cacophony. He was
a slim, fair-skinned boy with a ball of curly auburn hair curving over his forehead, and he
devoted himself to playing two things, tennis and the trumpet. He did both with such easy,
inborn skill that after observing him I had begun to think that I could master either one any
weekend I tried. Much like the rest of us on the surface, he had an underlying obliging and
considerate strain which barred him from being a really important member of the class. You had
to be rude at least sometimes and edgy often to be credited with “personality,” and without that
accolade no one at Devon could be anyone. No one, with the exception of course of Phineas.
To the left of the Prize Table Brinker straddled his cache of cider; behind him was the clump of
evergreens, and behind them there was after all a gentle rise, where the Ski Jump Committee was
pounding snow into a little take-off ramp whose lip was perhaps a foot higher than the slope of
the rise. From there our line of snow statues, unrecognizable artistic attacks on the Headmaster,
Mr. Ludsbury, Mr. Patch-Withers, Dr. Stanpole, the new dietitian, and Hazel Brewster curved in
an enclosing half-circle to the icy, muddy, lisping edge of the tidewater Naguamsett and back to
the other side of the Prize Table.
When the ski jump was ready there was a certain amount of milling around; twenty boys, tightly
reined in all winter, stood now as though with the bit firmly clamped between their teeth, ready
to stampede. Phineas should have started the sports events but he was absorbed in cataloguing
the prizes. All eyes swung next upon Brinker. He had been holding a pose above his cider of