"Drop in on me some night."
"What?" said Stover surprised.
"Come round and have a chat sometime," said Swazey, in a thoroughly
natural way.
"Why, sure; like to," said Stover bluffly, which, of course was the only
thing to say.
"To-night?"
"Sorry; I'm busy to-night," said Stover. Swazey, of course, being a
grind, did not realize the abhorrent, almost sacrilegious, social break
he was making in inviting him on his society evening.
"To-morrow, then?"
"Why, yes; to-morrow."
"I haven't been very sociable in not asking you before," said Swazey,
in magnificent incomprehension, "but I'd really like to have you."
"Why, thankee."
Stover, entrapped, received the invitation with perfect gravity,
although resolved to find some excuse.
But the next day, thinking it over, he said to himself that it really
was his duty, and, reflecting how pleased Swazey would be to receive a
call from one of his importance, he determined to give him that
pleasure. Setting out after supper, he met Bob Story.
"Whither away?" said Story, stopping.
"I'm going to drop in on a fellow called Swazey," said Stover, a little
conscious of the virtue of this act. "I sit next to him in chapel. He's
a good deal of a grind, but he asked me around, and I thought I'd go.
You know--the fellow in our row."
"That's very good of you," said Story, with a smile which he remembered
after.
Stover felt so himself. Still, he had the democracy of Yale to preserve,
and it was his duty. He went swinging on his way with that warm,
glowing, physical delight that, fortunately, the slightest virtuous
action is capable of arousing.
With Nathaniel Pike, a classmate, Swazey roomed in Divinity Hall, where,
attracted by the cheapness of the rooms, a few of the college had been
able to find quarters.
"Queer place," thought Dink to himself, eyeing a few of the divinity
students who went slipping by him. "Wonder what the deuce I can talk to
him about. Oh, well, I won't have to stay long."
Swazey, of course, being outside the current of college heroes, could
have but a limited view. He found the door at the end of the long
corridor and thundered his knock, as a giant announces himself.
"Come in if you're good-looking!" said a piping voice.
Stover entered with strongly accentuated good fellowship, giving his
hand with the politician's cordiality.
"How are you, Nat? How are you, Bill?"
He ensconced himself in the generous arm-chair, which bore the trace of
many masters, accepted a cigar and said, to put his hosts at their ease:
"Bully quarters you've got here. Blame sight more room than I've got."
Pike, cap on, a pad under his arm, apologized for going.
"Awful sorry, Stover; darned inhospitable. This infernal _News_ grind.
Hope y'will be sociable and stay till I get back."
"How are you making out?" said Stover, in an encouraging, generous way.
Pike scratched his ear, a large, loose ear, wrinkling up his long,
pointed nose in a grimace, as he answered:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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