A few days later, Vernon Loring turned up.
Harrison had not seen Loring since their meeting at Symposium, when he’d shared the good news of his Roarke acceptance. If he was surprised by their reunion here in Virginia, Loring himself did not seem to be.
“My young triplet friend,” he said mildly, in greeting.
They shook hands, and Loring held on to Harrison’s for a moment too long, actually holding it up for closer examination. “I am looking for evidence of physical labor,” he said.
“Oh, well, I’m in charge of the chickens, if that’s what you mean.”
“And does that suit you?”
“Frankly, not at all. But everything else about Roarke does. I’m so grateful to you.”
“Not at all. By now, I’m sure you understand the importance of steering the right people toward the college. You’ll do the same, I would hope.”
Harrison nodded. But it would be rare indeed to stumble across a young person with a mind like Eli’s, or—he supposed—his own, who’d be willing to be diverted from a Yale or a Stanford.
“Forgive me, but I had no idea you’d be here,” he said.
Loring smiled. “Still asking for forgiveness? We have a ways to go, I see. I understand you’ve made a friend of that brilliant young man we talked about. I wonder, would you introduce me?”
Harrison did, and the two of them began an animated conversation that gradually relocated to one of the library’s dark corners. By the time Harrison rejoined them, hours later, they were discussing St. Augustine.
“That’s an interesting guy,” Eli said the next morning when they sat down together for breakfast. “He found you, I take it?”
“Found me?”
“Well, yes. Not everyone at Roarke, but some of us. Sought out. Pointed in the right direction. It’s a tradition, I understand.”
Harrison refrained from noting that he had been the one doing the seeking, but he confirmed the part about the pointing. “I’d never heard of Roarke until Professor Loring,” he admitted.
“He and Gregories were at Princeton together. Before that, he was at Oxford with Roger Fount. I enjoyed talking with him.”
“Well,” said Harrison, “he’s a fan. Your fan. The first time I met him we discussed you. You were the only one of our generation he had any time for.”
“Oh. Well,” Eli said with his usual vague amusement, “that’s gratifying.”
“Did he check out your hands?” asked Harrison.
Eli’s fork, laden with the end of a sausage link, paused in midair. “What?”
“Oh … it’s just, he wanted to look at my hands last night. Something about evidence of physical labor. In the Roarkian tradition.”
Eli continued to look at him, and as he did, Harrison felt his own face begin to tighten, and the absolute conviction that he had offended Eli started to pulse through him, horribly. But after a moment his friend shook his head in an affable way. “No, he did not. We’re not all meant for the fields, I suppose.”
Harrison flinched. Then, in relief, he managed to smile back.
Most of the sixty or so men （and handful of women） who ultimately converged at Hayek were older than Eli and himself by two decades at least, and Harrison got used to being introduced as “our delegate from the land of youth” or “young Mr. Stone’s classmate at Roarke.” He was asked constantly about his origins, his forebears, his experiences, and how they had brought him to Roarke, and where they might lead him next. “I’ve deferred at Harvard,” he said, over and over, to general approval. （Though the Yalies and Princetonians seemed, amusingly, to still nurse old rivalries. “Lord, make me a Harvard man. But not yet!” said one.）