Chapter 7

"I hear I'm rooming with you," said Stover, shaking hands with the Shad.

"You certainly are, my bounding boy."

"Where's the room?"

"Straight ahead, turret room, finest on the campus, swept by ocean breezes and all that sort of thing."

"Why, Dink," said Dennis de Brian de Boru in affectionate octaves, "you old, slab-sided, knock-kneed, baby-cheeked, wall-eyed, battling Dink. You've grown ee-normously."

"How's your muscle?" said the Tennessee Shad, with an ulterior motive.

"Feel it," said Stover, who had consecrated the summer to the same.

"Hard as a goat," said Dennis after an admiring whistle. "All nice little cast-iron, jerky bunches, ready and willing. Been in training, Dink?"

"Yes, just so."

"Feels sort of soft to me," said the Tennessee Shad pensively.

"Oh, it does?"

"Question: what can you do with it? Lift a trunk as heavy as this?"

"Huh!" said Stover, bending down. "Where do you want it?"

"Gee! I do believe he can carry it almost to the room," said the Tennessee Shad, whose theory of life was to admire others do his work for him.

Stover bore it proudly on his shoulders and set it down. Dennis, planting himself arms akimbo, surveyed him with melancholy disapproval.

"Too bad, Dink! I had expected better things from you. You're still green, Dink. Been too much with the cows and chickens. Don't do it; don't do it!"

Stover glanced at the Tennessee Shad, who, satisfied, had curled himself up on the bed, to rest himself after the exertion of walking.

"I guess I am still a sucker," he said, scratching his head with a foolish grin, "I'll not be so easy next time."

"Never mind, Dink," said Dennis comfortingly. "Your education's been neglected, but I'm here. Remember that, Dennis is here, ready and willing."

Presently the Gutter Pup and Lovely Mead came tumbling in, and then the lumbering proportions of P. Lentz, King of the Kennedy, crowded through the doorway, and the conversation continued in rapid crossfire.

"Who's seen the Waladoo Bird?"

"Jock Hasbrouck's dropped into the third form."

"What do you think of the electric lights they've given us?"

"They've stuck an arc light in the Circle, too."

"We'll fix that."

"How's the new material, King?"

"Rotten!"

"Think we've a chance for the House championship?"

"A fine chance--to finish last."

"Say, who do you think they've stuck us with?"

"Who?"

"Beekstein."

"Suffering Moses!"

"Never mind. We've got the Dink."

"What's he do?"

"He's the champion truckman--carry your trunk for you anywhere you want."

Dink, thus brought unwillingly into the conversation, blushed a warm red.

"Truckman?" said P. Lentz, mystified.

"Champion," said Finnegan. "The mysterious champion truckman of Broad Street Station, Philadelphia. Stand up, Dink, my man, and twitch your muscles."

Stover squirmed uneasily on his chair. There was no malice in the teasing, and yet he was at a loss how to turn it.

The Gutter Pup, as president of the Sporting Club and chief authority on the life and works of the late Marquis of Queensberry, examined the embarrassed Stover, running professional fingers over his legs and arms.

"You're the fellow who tried to fight the whole Green House, aren't you?" he said, immensely interested.

"Why, yes."

"Good nerve," said the Gutter Pup. "You've got something the style of Beans Middleton, who stood up to me for ten rounds in the days of the old Seventy-second Street gang. I'll train you up some time. You'd do well with the crouching style--good reach, quick on the trigger and all that sort of thing. Like fighting?"

"Why, I--I don't know," said Stover helplessly, unable to make out whether the Gutter Pup spoke in jest.

"Modest and brave!" said the irrepressible Finnegan.

The conversation drifted away; Stover, with a sigh of relief, obliterated himself in a corner, feeling immense distances between himself and the laughing group that continued to exchange rapid banter.

"Dennis, they tell me you're fresher than ever."

"Sir, you compliment me."

"Say, Boru, have they put you on the bottle yet?"

"Not yet, Lovely. Waiting for you to drop it."

It was not particularly brilliant, but it was good-natured, and there was a certain trick to it that he had lost in the long weeks of Coventry.

Presently the group departed to take the keen edge off the approaching luncheon pangs by a trip to the Jigger Shop, the center of social life.

"Coming, Dink?" said the Gutter Pup.

"I--I'll be over a little later," said Stover, who did and did not want to go.

Left alone, half angry at his own enforced aloofness, and yet desiring solitude, Stover stood among the litter of boxes and gaping trunks and surveyed the four bare walls that spelled for him the word home.

"It's a bully room--bully," he said to himself with a tender feeling of possession. "The Shad's a bully fellow--bully! Dennis is a corker! I'm going to make good; see if I don't! But I'm going slow. They've got to come to me. I won't break in until they want me. Gee! What a peach of a room!"

He went to the window and looked out at the whole panorama of the school that ran beneath him, from the long, rakish lines of the Upper, by Memorial Hall, to the chapel and the circle of Houses that ended at the rear with the Dickinson. Below, boys were streaking across the green depths like water-bugs over limpid surfaces, or hallooing joyfully from window to terrace, greeting one another with bearlike hugs, tumbling about in frolicking heaps. He was on the mountain, they on the plain. His was the imaginative perspective and the troubled vision of one who finds a strange city at his feet.

"It's all there," he said lamely, confused by his own impressions. "All of it."

"Homesick?" said a thin voice behind him.

He turned to find Finnegan eyeing him uncertainly.

"Why, you wild Irishman," Dink said, surprised. "Thought you'd gone with the crowd. Hello, what's up now?"

Finnegan, with an air of great mystery, locked the door, extracted the key and, returning, enthroned himself on a chair which he had previously planted defiantly on a trunk.

"That's so you can't throw me out."

"Well?"

"I'm going to be fresh as paint."

"You are?" said Stover, mystified and amused.

"Fact," said Finnegan, who, having crossed his legs, plunged his hands into his pockets and cocked one eye, said impressively: "Dink, you're wrong."

"I am--am I?"

"But never mind; I'm here. Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan--ready and willing."

"Irishman, I do believe you're embarrassed," said Stover, surprised.

"I'm not," said Finnegan indignantly. "Only--only, I want to be impressive. Dink, you're getting in wrong again."

"What in thunder----"

"You are, Dink, you are. But don't worry; I'm here. In the first place, you can't forget what every one else has forgotten."

"Forget what?"

"The late unpleasantness," said Finnegan, with an expelling wave of his hand. "That's over, spiked, dished, set back, covered up, cobwebbed, no flowers and no tombstone."

"I know."

"No, you don't--that's just it. You've got it on your mind--brooding and all that sort of thing."

Stover sat down and stared at the Lilliputian philosopher.

"Well, I like your nerve!"

"Don't--don't start in like that," said Finnegan, rolling up his sleeves over his funny, thin forearms, "cause I shall have to thrash you."

"Well, go on," said Stover suddenly.

"You're not in Coventry--you never have been. You're one of us," said Dennis glibly. "BUT--I repeat BUT--you can't be one of us if you don't believe in your own noddle that you are one of us! Get that? That's deep--no charge, always glad to oblige a customer."

"Keep on," said Stover, leaning back.

"With your kind permission, directly. It's all in this--you haven't got the trick."

"The trick?"

"The trick of conversation. That's not just it. The trick of answering back. Aha, that's better! Scratch out first sentiment. Change signals!"

"There's something in that," said Stover, genuinely amazed.

"You blush."

"What?"

"The word was blush," said Finnegan firmly. "I saw you--Finnegan saw you and grieved. And why? Because you didn't have the trick of answering back."

"Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan," said Stover slowly, "I believe you are a whole-hearted little cuss. Also, you're not so far off, either. Now, since this is a serious conversation, this is where I stand: I went through Hades last spring--I deserved it and it's done me good. I've come back to make good. Savez? And that's a serious thing, too. Now if you have one particular theory about your art of conversation to elucidate--eluce."

"One theory!" said Finnegan, chirping along as he perceived the danger-point passed. "I'm a theorist, and a real theorist doesn't have one theory; he has dozens. Let me see; let me think, reflect, cogitate, tickle the thinker. Best way is to start at the A, B, C--first principles, all that sort of thing. Supposin', supposin' you come into the room with that hat on--it's a bum hat, by the way--and some one pipes up; 'Get that at the fire sale?' What are you going to answer?"

"Why, I suppose I'd grin," said Stover slowly, "and say: 'How did you guess it?'"

"Wrong," said Finnegan. "You let him take the laugh."

"Well, what?"

"Something in this style: 'Oh, no, I traded it for luck with a squint-eyed, humpbacked biter-off of puppy-dog tails that got it out of Rockefeller's ashcan.' See?"

"No, Dennis, no," said Stover, bewildered. "I see, but there are some things beyond me. Every one isn't a young Shakspere."

"I know," said Finnegan, accepting the tribute without hesitation. "But there's the principle. You go him one better. You make him look like a chump. You show him what you could have said in his place. That shuts him up, makes him feel foolish, spikes the gun, corks the bottle."

"By Jove!"

"It's what I call the Superiority of the Superlative over the Comparative."

"It sounds simple," said Stover pensively.

"When you know the trick."

"You know, Dennis," said Stover, smiling reminiscently, "I used to have the gift of gab once, almost up to you."

"Then let's take a few crouching starts," said Dennis, delighted.

"Go ahead."

"Room full of fellows. You enter."

"I enter."

"I speak: 'Dink, I bet Bill here a quarter that you used a toothbrush.'"

"You lose," said Stover; "I use a whisk-broom."

"Good!" said Dennis professionally, "but a little quicker, on the jump, get on the spring-board. Try again. 'Why, Dink, how _do_ you get such pink cheeks?'"

"That's a hard one," said Dink.

"Peanuts!"

"Let me think."

"Bad, very bad."

"Well, what would you say?"

"Can't help it, Bill; the girls won't let me alone!"

"Try me again," said Stover, laughing.

"Say, Dink, did your mamma kiss you good-by?"

"Sure, Mike," said Stover instantly; "combed my hair, dusted my hands, and told me not to talk to fresh little kids like you."

"Why, Dink, come to my arms," said Dennis, delighted. "A Number 1. Mark 100 for the term. That's the trick."

"Think I'll do?"

"Sure pop. Of course, there are times when the digestion's jumping fences and you get sort of in the thunder glums. Then just answer, 'Is that the best you can do to-day?' or 'Why, you're a real funny man, aren't you?' sarcastic and sassy."

"I see."

"But better be original."

"Of course."

"Oh, it's all a knack."

"And to think that's all there is to it!" said Stover, profoundly moved.

"When you know," said Dennis in correction.

"Dennis, I have a thought," said Stover suddenly. "Let's get out and try the system."

"Presto!"

"The Jigger Shop?"

"Why tarry?"

On the way over Dink stopped short with an exclamation.

"What now?" said Finnegan.

"Tough McCarty and a female," said Stover in great indignation.

They stood aside, awkwardly snatching off their caps as McCarty and his companion passed them on the walk. Stover saw a bit of blue felt with the white splash of a wing across, a fluffy shirtwaist, and a skirt that was a skirt, and nothing else. His glance went to McCarty, meeting it with the old, measuring antagonism. They passed.

"Damn him!" said Stover.

"Why, Dink, how shocking!"

"He's grown!"

In the joy of his own increased stature he had never dreamed that like processes of Nature produce like results.

"Ten pounds heavier," said Dennis. "He ought to make a peach of a tackle this year!"

"Bringing girls around!" said Stover scornfully, to vent his rage.

"More to be pitied than blamed," sang Dennis on a popular air. "It's his sister. Luscious eyes--quite the figure, too."

"Figure--huh!" said Stover, who hadn't seen.

At the Jigger Shop the Gutter Pup, looking up from a meringue entirely surrounded by peach jiggers, hailed them:

"Hello, Rinky Dink! Changed your mind, eh? Thought you were homesick."

"Sure I was, but Dennis came in with a bucket and caught the tears," said Stover gravely. "I'll call you in next time. Al, how be you? Here's what I owe you. Set 'em up."

"_Très bien_!" said Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan.

That night, as they started on the problem of interior decorations, Stover threw himself on the bed, rolling with laughter.

"Well, I'm glad you've decided to be cheerful; but what in blazes are you hee-hawing at?" said the Tennessee Shad, mystified.

"I'm laughing," said Stover, loud enough for Dennis down the hall to hear, "at the Superiority of the Superlative over the Comparative."

XII

"Why, look at the Dink!" said Lovely Mead the next afternoon, as Stover emerged in football togs which he had industriously smeared with mud to conceal their novelty.

"He must be going out for the 'Varsity!" said Fatty Harris sarcastically.

"By request," said the Gutter Pup.

"Why, who told you?" said Stover.

"You trying for the 'Varsity?" said Lovely Mead incredulously. "Why, where did you play football?"

"Dear me, Lovely," said Stover, lacing his jacket, "thought you read the newspapers."

"Huh! What position are you trying for?"

"First substitute scorer," said Stover, according to Finnegan's theory. "Any more questions?"

Lovely Mead, surprised, looked at Stover in perplexity and remained silent.

Dink, laughing to himself at the ease of the trick, started across the Circle for the 'Varsity football field, whither already the candidates were converging to the first call of the season.

He had started joyfully forth from the skeptics on the steps, but once past the chapel and in sight of the field his gait abruptly changed. He went quietly, thoughtfully, a little alarmed at his own daring, glancing at the padded figures that overtopped him.

The veterans with the red L on their black sweaters were apart, tossing the ball back and forth and taking playful tackles at one another. Stover, hiding himself modestly in the common herd, watched with entranced eyes the lithe, sinuous forms of Flash Condit and Charlie DeSoto--greater to him than the faint heroes of mythology--as they tumbled the Waladoo Bird gleefully on the ground. There was Butcher Stevens of the grim eye and the laconic word, a man to follow and emulate; and the broad span of Turkey Reiter's shoulders, a mark to grow to. Meanwhile, Garry Cockrell, the captain, and Mr. Ware, the new coach from the Princeton championship eleven, were drawing nearer on their tour of inspection and classification. Dink knew his captain only from respectful distances--the sandy hair, the gaunt cheek bones and the deliberate eye, whom governors of states alone might approach with equality, and no one else. Under the dual inspection the squad was quickly sorted, some sent back to their House teams till another year brought more weight and experience, and others tentatively retained on the scrubs.

"Better make the House team, Jenks," said the low, even voice of the captain. "You want to harden up a bit. Glad you reported, though."

Then Dink stood before his captain, dimly aware of the quick little eyes of Mr. Ware quietly scrutinizing him.

"What form?"

"Third."

The two were silent a moment studying not the slender, wiry figure, but the look in the eyes within.

"What are you out for?"

"End, sir."

"What do you weigh?"

"One hundred and fifty--about," said Dink.

A grim little twinkle appeared in the captain's eyes.

"About one hundred and thirty-five," he said, with a measuring glance.

"But I'm hard, hard as nails, sir," said Stover desperately.

"What football have you played?"

Stover remained silent.

"Well?"

"I--I haven't played," he said unwillingly.

"You seem unusually eager," said Cockrell, amused at this strange exhibition of willingness.

"Yes, sir."

"Good spirit; keep it up. Get right out for your House team----"

"I won't!" said Stover, blurting it out in his anger and then flushing: "I mean, give me a chance, won't you, sir?"

Cockrell, who had turned, stopped and came back.

"What makes you think you can play?" he said not unkindly.

"I've got to," said Stover desperately.

"But you don't know the game."

"Please, sir, I'm not out for the 'Varsity," said Stover confusedly. "I mean, I want to be in it, to work for the school, sir."

"You're not a Freshman?" said the captain, and the accents of his voice were friendly.

"No, sir."

"What's your name?" said Cockrell, a little thrilled to feel the genuine veneration that inspired the "sir."

"Stover--Dink Stover."

"You were down at the Green last year, weren't you?"

"Yes, sir," said Stover, looking down with a sinking feeling.

"You're the fellow who tried to fight the whole House?"

"Yes, sir."

"Well, Dink, this is a little different--you can't play football on nothing but nerve."

"You can if you've got enough of it," said Stover, all in a breath. "Please, sir, give me a chance. You can fire me if I'm no good. I only want to be useful. You've got to have a lot of fellows to stand the banging and you can bang me around all day. I do know something about it, sir; I've practiced tackling and falling on the ball all summer, and I'm hard as nails. Just give me a chance, will you? Just one chance, sir."

Cockrell looked at Mr. Ware, whose eye showed the battling spark as he nodded.

"Here, Dink," he said gruffly, "I can't be wasting any more time over you. I told you to go back to the House team, didn't I?"

Stover, with a lump in his throat, nodded the answer he could not utter.

"Well, I've changed my mind. Get over there in the squad."

The revulsion of feeling was so sudden that tears came into Stover's eyes.

"You're really going to let me stay?"

"Get over there, you little nuisance!"

Dink went a few steps, and then stopped and tightened his shoelaces a long minute.

"Too bad the little devil is so light," said Cockrell to Mr. Ware.

"Best player I ever played against had no right on a football field."

"But one hundred and thirty-five!"

"Yes, that's pretty light."

"What the deuce were you chinning so long about?" said Cheyenne Baxter to Dink, as he came joyfully into the squad.

"Captain wanted just a bit of general expert advice from me," said Dink defiantly. "I've promised to help out."

The squad, dividing, practiced starts. Stover held his own, being naturally quick; and though Flash Condit and Charlie DeSoto distanced him, still he earned a good word for his performances.

Presently Mr. Ware came up with a ball and, with a few words of introduction, started them to falling on it as it bounded grotesquely over the ground, calling them from the ranks by name.

"Hard at it, Stevens."

"Dive at it."

"Don't stop till you get it."

"Oh, squeeze the ball!"

Stover, moving up, caught the eye of Mr. Ware intently on him, and rose on his toes with the muscles in his arms strained and eager.

"Now, Stover, hard!"

The ball with just an extra impetus left the hand of Mr. Ware. Stover went at it like a terrier, dove and came up glorious and muddy with the pigskin hugged in his arms. It was the extent of his football knowledge, but that branch he had mastered on the soft summer turf.

Mr. Ware gave a grunt of approval and sent him plunging after another. This time as he dove the ball took a tricky bounce and slipped through his arms. Quick as a flash Dink, rolling over, recovered himself and flung himself on it.

"That's the way!" said Mr. Ware. "Follow it up. Can't always get it the first time. Come on, Baxter."

The real test came with the tackling. He waited his turn, all eyes, trying to catch the trick, as boy after boy in front of him went cleanly or awkwardly out to down the man who came plunging at him. Some tackled sharply and artistically, their feet leaving the ground and taking the runner off his legs as though a scythe had passed under him; but most of the tackling was crude, and often the runner slipped through the arms and left the tackler prone on the ground to rise amid the jeers of his fellows.

"Your turn, Stover," said the voice of the captain. "Wait a minute." He looked over the squad and selected McCarty, saying: "Here, Tough, come out here. Here's a fellow thinks all you need in this game is nerve. Let's see what he's got."

Dink stood out, neither hearing nor caring for the laugh that went up. He glanced up fifteen yards away where Tough McCarty stood waiting the starting signal. He was not afraid, he was angry clean through, ready to tackle the whole squad, one after another.

"Shall I take it sideways?" said Tough, expecting to be tackled from the side as the others had been.

"No, head on, Tough. Let's see if you can get by him," said Cockrell. "Let her go!"

McCarty, with the memory of past defiances, went toward Stover head down, full tilt. Ordinarily in practice the runner slackens just before the tackle; but McCarty, expecting slight resistance from a novice, arrived at top speed.

Stover, instead of hesitating or waiting the coming, hurled himself recklessly forward. Shoulder met knee with a crash that threw them both. Stunned by the savage impact, Stover, spilled head over heels, dizzy and furious, instinctively flung himself from his knees upon the prostrate body of McCarty, as he had followed the elusive ball a moment before.

"That's instinct, football instinct," said Mr. Ware to Cockrell, as they approached the spot where Dink, still dazed, was clutching Tough McCarty's knees in a convulsive hug.

"Let go! Let go there, you little varmint," said Tough McCarty, considerably shaken. "How long are you going to hold me here?"

Some one touched Dink on the shoulder; he looked up through the blur to see the captain's face.

"All right, Dink, get up."

But Stover released his grip not a whit.

"Here, you young bulldog," said Cockrell with a laugh, "it's all over. Let go. Stand up. Sort of groggy, eh?"

Dink, pulled to his feet, felt the earth slip under him in drunken reelings.

"I missed him," he said brokenly, leaning against Mr. Ware.

"H'm, not so bad," said the coach gruffly.

"How do you feel?" said Garry Cockrell, looking at him with his quiet smile.

Dink saw the smile and misjudged it.

"Give me another chance," he cried furiously. "I'll get him."

"What! Ready for another tackle?" said the captain, looking at him intently.

"Please, sir."

"Well, get your head clear first."

"Let me take it now, sir!"

"All right."

"Hit him harder than he hits you, and grip with your hands," said the voice of Mr. Ware in his ear.

Dink stood out again. The earth was gradually returning to a state of equilibrium, but his head was buzzing and his legs were decidedly rebels to his will.

The captain, seeing this, to give him time, spoke to McCarty with just a shade of malice.

"Well, Tough, do you want to take it again?"

"Do I?" said McCarty sarcastically. "Oh, yes, most enjoyable! Don't let me interfere with your pleasure. Why don't you try it yourself?"

"Would you rather watch?"

"Oh, no, of course not. This is a real pleasure, thank you. The little devil would dent a freight train."

"All ready, Stover?" said Cockrell.

The players stood in two lines, four yards apart. No one laughed. They looked at Stover, thrilling a little with his communicated recklessness, grunting forth their approval.

"Good nerve."

"The real stuff."

"Pure grit."