Dick and Larry had the largest of the upstairs rooms, with two windows on the side toward the street and the campus. While the college year was still in its infancy, it began to be remarked that these windows were seldom dark in the evening. Which meant that at least one of the room’s occupants knew what he wanted and was going stubbornly after it. “Great Peter!” Dick complained, one evening after the Thanksgiving game had closed the foot-ball season, “aren’t you ever going to take any time off at all, Larry? See here; I’ve got an ‘invite’ to a blowout at the Omeg house to-night, and it includes you. Cut out the studious stuff for a change and surprise yourself by coming along to mix and mingle for an hour or so.” “Nix on the social stuff,” grumbled the big, red-headed fellow at the study table; “I’ve got two English themes to write.” “Which means that you don’t want to go,” Dick charged discontentedly. “All right; you can put it that way, if you like. You know what I think about the frats.” “I know you’re a howling crank about ’em. You haven’t a single argument against ’em that’ll hold water.” “Sure I have. But I haven’t time to trot them out for you now. Got these themes to chew on, and after that――――” “Yes; and after that, your lame dogs will begin to string in. You’ve got the wrong slant on the cripples, Larry; the faculty has the right one. If a fellow can’t keep up with the parade, out he goes. And he ought to go.” “I can’t see it that way――not for the kind of fellows who have taken to dropping in here. They want to stay in college――want to make good. And most of ’em only need a little boosting and jacking up.” “Well,” said Dick, hustling into his good clothes, “I’m mighty glad I don’t have to look at it through your spectacles. I don’t want to be a pack-mule before my time.” When he was left alone, Larry dug for the themes. English was his “black beast,” as a Frenchman would put it, and he had to work like a Turk for it――that is, if Turks ever do work. In his time――which was only yesterday――managers of the nation’s great industries were beginning to say that the technical colleges were paying too little attention to English; that they were turning out engineers who couldn’t write an ordinary, every-day business letter. Hence the technicals, Old Sheddon among them, were stressing the English course. Larry’s home surroundings hadn’t been particularly conducive to the growth of literary English. In the Donovan home “ain’t” and “he don’t” and “might of” had their places at the fireside, along with split infinitives, plural verbs in the wrong places, “let him and I,” telephone answers like “this is him,” and a lot of other expressions that the grammar books call “colloquialisms.” So he had to labor pretty heavily in “English I.”