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Show -102- One of his colleagues looked at his wristwatch? "About ten minutes," he said, "the meeting." The others began to stir. The Professor took a last taste of his soup? then wiped his lips with a paper napkin. The cafeteria was beginning the empty all around them. Apparently all of the meetings had been called for the same hour. He had a dread of meetings. At least today they would have something to talk about. What he was afraid of was that the same people would do all the talking. Some of them, perfectly nice, perfectly competent people in a small group, could not resist the temptation to get up and make a speech in a meeting of the whole department. For that reason, he made it a point seldom to talk. They left the cafeteriagand walked up the path that crossed the quadrangle to the Humanities Building. It was full in both directions? with faculty members walking in one direction, the students, unexpectedly relieved from classes for a few hours? moving towards the cafeteria and the parking lots. A few students cut across the grass, where two mongrel dogs wrestled in mock battle, but most held to the paths that ran beneath a small grove of tall Monterey pine. Inside the Humanities Building, the bustle was unusually intense for this time of day. The Professor had forgotten the number of the room where the meeting was to be held. He asked one of the office secretaries as he picked up the handful of mostly junk mail from his box; then he made his way down the crowded corridor to the meeting. |
