"I've got too much to learn," said Regan, leaning back and elevating his legs in the national position. "You know something; I don't. You can bluff; I'm a rotten bluffer. I've got to train my whole mind, lick it into shape and make it work for me, if I'm going to do what I want." "Tom, what are you aiming for?" "You'd never guess." "Well, what?" "Politics." "Politics?" said Stover, opening his mouth. "Exactly," said Regan, puffing at his corncob pipe. "I want to go back out West and get in the fight. It's a glorious fight out there. A real fight. You don't know the West, Stover." "No." "We believe in something out there, and we get up and fight for it--independence, new ideas, clean government, hard fighters." "I hadn't thought of you that way," said Stover, more and more surprised. "That's the only thing I care about," said Regan frankly. "I've come from nothing, and I believe in that nothing. But to do anything I've got to get absolute hold of myself." "Tom, you ought to get in with the fellows more. You ought to know all kinds," said Stover, feeling an opening. "I will, when I get the right," said Regan, nodding. "Why the devil don't you let the University help you out a while? You can pay it back," said Stover angrily. "Never! I know it could be done, but not for me," said Regan, shaking his head. "What I need is the hardest things to come up against, and I'm not going to dodge them." "Still, you ought to be with us; you ought to make friends." "I'm going to do that," said Regan, nodding. "I'm going to get in at South Middle after Christmas and perhaps get some work in the Coöp." He took up a sheet of paper jotted over with figures. "I'm about fifty dollars to the good; a couple of weeks' work at Christmas will bring that up about twenty more. If I can make a hundred and fifty this summer I'll have a good start. I want to do it, because I want to play football. It's bully! I like the fight in it!" "What sort of work will you do?" said Stover curiously. "I may go in the surface cars down in New York." "Driving?" "Sure. They get good pay. I could get work in the mines--I've done that--but it's pretty tough." "But, Tom, what the deuce do you pick out the hardest grind for? Make friends with fellows who only want to know you and like you, and you'll get a dozen openings where you'll make twice what you get at manual labor." "Well, there's this to it," said Regan ruminatively, "It's an opportunity I won't always have." "What the deuce do you mean?" "The opportunity to meet the fellow who gets the grind of life--to understand what he thinks of himself, and especially what he thinks of those above him. I won't have many more chances to see him on the ground floor, and some day I've got to know him well enough to convince him. See? By the way, it would be a good college course for a lot of you fellows if you got in touch with the real thing also."