College freshmen -- Juvenile fiction; College stories; Male friendship -- Juvenile fiction
“Dick,” said Larry, and he tried to say it casually, and couldn’t,
“the faculty letter isn’t going to your father. You’re to have another
chance.”
For a time Dick didn’t speak or move; just squatted there on the floor
with his hands locked over his knees and with queer little twitches
coming and going at the corners of his mouth. After a bit he managed to
say: “How do you mean?――another chance.”
Rapidly, because he couldn’t trust himself to go at it deliberately,
Larry told of his interview with the president, and of the president’s
promise to “review” Dick’s case.
“You’ll be conditioned, and you’ll have to make up your classroom
work,” he went on, “but we can pull you over that hill all right. And
he told me that the letter hadn’t been sent to your father. I guess he
was just as sorry about having to send it as you were about having it
sent. They think a lot of your father here in Old Sheddon, Dick.”
Slowly Dick got upon his feet, crossed the room, and sat upon the edge
of his bed.
“For a minute or so you got me all ‘hope up,’ Larry,” he said soberly.
“Goodness knows, I want to stay bad enough, but I can’t. I won’t ask
Dad for any more money, and it’s a cinch that I’m not going to let you
go to work in Prac. Mechan. and lose out on foot-ball, just to put up
for me.”
“Now see here,” Larry was beginning; but just then there was a rap at
the door and half a dozen of Dick’s house brothers, Carey Lansing among
them, came stringing into the room to drape themselves around on the
different pieces of furniture.
“We know all about it, Dick,” said Lansing without preface. “Wally
Dixon has spilled the beans all over the place. Here’s how――with the
Sheddon series for this red-headed pal of yours.”
Dick rose to the occasion manfully.
“You fellows are all right; you always have been, to me. But I’ve
got to go home, just the same.” And then, with his jaw set, he made
a clean breast of everything, telling about his debts and winding up
with Larry’s offer,――which he wasn’t going to accept――and with his own
intention of kicking himself out of the Zeta Omegas.
“Like Zeke you will!” said Lansing. “Also like Zeke you’d let Donnie
side-step his chance on the ’Varsity and take on as an instructor to
split with you. What do you think you’re one of us for, anyhow? The
house will organize a corporation and stake you――you ought to know that
much, little as you know about other things. And next year you can bone
down and save your nickels and pay it back. What’s the matter with
that?”
Dick’s mouth was twitching again.
“There’s nothing the matter with it, except that you’re a lot of
dad-beaned, inforgotten, turkey-trodden easy marks,” he said, hiding
his real feelings under a mask of brotherly abuse. “I’m not worth
saving.”
“Of course you’re not,” said Lansing, retorting in kind. “We all know
that. We’re not doing it for you; we’re doing it for the sake of
getting at least one good man on the ’Varsity next year. See?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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