“Not yet, Stover,” said Regan, always with the same finality in his tone. “I’ve got to see my way clear; I’ve got to know if I can down that infernal Greek and Latin first. If I can, I’m coming out.”
“Where do you room?” said Stover.
“Oh, out about a mile—a sort of rat-hole.”
“I want to drop in on you.”
“Come out sometime.”
“Drop in on me.”
“I’m going to.”
“I say, Regan, why don’t you see Le Baron?”
“What for?”
“Why, he might—might give you some good tips,” said Stover, a little embarrassed.
“Exactly. Well, I prefer to help myself.”
Stover broke out laughing.
“You’re a fierce old growler!”
“I am.”
“I wish you’d come around a little and let the fellows know you.”
“That can wait.”
“I say, Regan,” said Stover suddenly, “would you mind doing the waiting over at our joint?”
“Why should I?”
“Why, I thought,” said Stover, not saying what he had thought, “I thought perhaps you’d find it more convenient at Commons.”
“Is that what you really thought?” said Regan, with a quizzical smile.
The man’s perfect simplicity and unconsciousness impressed Stover more than all the fetish of enthroned upper classmen; he was always a little embarrassed before Regan.
“No,” he said frankly, “but, Regan, I would like to have you with us, and I think you’d like it.”
“We’ll talk it over,” said Regan deliberately. “I’ll think it over myself. Goodbye.”
Stover put out his hand instinctively. Their hands held each other a moment, and their eyes met in open, direct friendship.
He stood a moment thoughtfully, after they had parted. What he had offered had been offered impulsively. He began to wonder if it would work out without embarrassment in the intimacy of the eating-joint.
The crowd that they had joined—as Gimbel had predicted—had taken a long dining-room cheerily lighted, holding one table, around which sixteen ravenous freshmen managed to squeeze in turbulent, impatient clamor.
Bob Story, Hunter and his crowd, Hungerford and several men from Groton and St. Mark’s, Schley and his roommate Troutman made up a coterie that already had in it the elements of the leadership of the class.
As he was deliberating, he perceived Joe Hungerford rolling along, with his free and easy slouch, immersed in the faded blue sweater into which he had lazily bolted to make chapel, a cap riding on the exuberant wealth of blond hair. He broached the subject at once:
“Say, Hungerford, you’re the man I want.”
“Fire away.”
Stover detailed his invitation to Regan, concluding:
“Now, tell me frankly what you think.”
“Have him with us, by all means,” said Hungerford impulsively.
“Might it not be a little embarrassing? How do you think the other fellows would like it?”
“Why, there’s only one way to take it,” said Hungerford directly. “Our crowd’s too damned select now to suit me. We need him a darn sight more than he needs us.”
“I knew you’d feel that way.”
“By George, that’s why I came to Yale. If there are any little squirts in the crowd think differently, a swift kick where it’ll do the most good will clear the atmosphere.”
Stover looked at him with impulsive attraction. He was boyish, unspoiled, eager.
“Now, look here, Dink—you don’t mind me calling you that, do you?” continued Hungerford, with a little hesitation.
“Go ahead.”
“I want you to understand how I feel about things. I’ve got about everything in the world to make a conceited, pompous, useless little ass out of me, and about two hundred people who want to do it. I wish to blazes I was starting where Regan is—where my old dad did; I might do something worth while. Now, I don’t want any hungry, bootlicking little pups around me whose bills I am to pay. I want to come in on your scale, and I’m mighty glad to get the chance. That’s why my allowance isn’t going to be one cent more than yours; and I want you to know it. Now, as for this fellow Regan—he sounds like a man. I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fix it up in a shake of a lamb’s tail.”
“Question is whether Regan will come,” said Stover doubtfully.
“By George, I’ll make him. We’ll go right out together and put it to him.”
Which they did; and Regan, yielding to the open cordiality of Hungerford, accepted and promised to change at the end of his week.
In the second week, having satisfactorily arranged his affairs—by what slender margin no one ever knew—Regan reported for practise. He had played a little football in the Middle West and, though his knowledge was crude, he learned slowly, and what he learned he never lost. His great strength, and a certain quality which was moral as well as physical, very shortly won him the place of right guard, where with each week he strengthened his hold.
Regan’s introduction at the eating-joint had been achieved without the embarrassment Stover had feared. He came and went with a certain natural dignity that was not assumed, but was inherent in the simplicity of his character. He entered occasionally into the conversation and always, when the others were finished and tarrying over the tobacco, brought his plate to a vacant place and ate his supper; but, that through, though often urged, went his purposeful way, with always that certain solitary quality about him that made approach difficult and had left him friendless.
On the fourth afternoon of practise, as Stover, restraining the raging impatience within him,
