When McCarthy came grinning through the door, he found Dink, his legs drawn up Turkish fashion, staring rebelliously at the ceiling.
“Hello! In love, or what?” said Tough, stopping short. “Recovering, perhaps, from the brilliant conversation?”
“By George, I’m not going out for anything more!” said Dink, between his teeth.
“Heavens! haven’t you slaved enough?”
“You bet I have. I’ll be hanged if I’m going through here—just varsity material. I’m going to be a little while my own master.”
“You think so?” said McCarthy, with a short, incredulous laugh. “Everyone’s doing something.” McCarthy was a candidate for the baseball nine.
“Have you heard anything about Regan?” said Stover, between puffs.
“In what way?”
“Have any of the sophomores been around to see him?”
McCarthy exploded into laughter. “Have they? Didn’t you hear what happened?”
“No. What?”
“They spent half the night locating his diggings, and when they got them the old rhinoceros wouldn’t receive them.”
“Why not?”
“Hadn’t time, he said, to be fooling with them.”
“The old chump!”
“Lucky dog,” said McCarthy, between his teeth. “I wish I had the nerve to do the same.”
“What the deuce?”
“It makes me boil! I can’t sit up and have a solemn bunch of fools look me over. I can’t be natural.”
“It’s give and take,” said Dink, smiling. “You’ll think yourself the lord of the universe next year.”
“I’m not so sure,” said McCarthy, gloomily.
“Rats!”
“Oh, you—you’ve a cinch,” said McCarthy. “They’re not picking you to pieces and dissecting you. Half the crowd that come to see me have got some friends in the class they’d rather see in than me. I’m darned uncertain, and I know it.”
Stover, who believed the contrary, laughed at him. He rose and went out, determined to find Regan and make him understand conditions.
His walk led him along the dark ways of College Street into the forgotten street where, under the roof of a bakery, Regan had found a breathing-hole for five dollars a month.
For the first time a little feeling of jealousy went through Stover as he swung along. Why should he help build up the man who might snatch from him his ambition? Why the deuce had Le Baron mentioned Regan as a possible captain? No one else thought of such a thing. Compared to him, Regan was a novice in football knowledge and experience. Still, it was true that the man had a stalwart, unflinching way of moving on that impressed. There was a danger there with which he must reckon.
He found Regan in carpet slippers and sweater, bending grimly over the next day’s Greek as if it were a rock to be shattered with the weight of his back.
“8–16–6–9–47,” said Stover, in a hallo, giving the signal that had sent him through the center.
Regan started up.
“Hello, Dink, old bantam; glad to hear your voice.”
Stover entered, with a glance at the room. A cot, a bureau, a washstand reinforced by ropes, a pine table scorched and blistered, and a couple of chairs were the entire equipment. Half the gas globe was left and two-thirds of the yellow-green shade at the window. In the corner was the battle-scarred valise which had brought Regan’s whole effects to college.
“Boning out the Greek?” said Stover, placing a straight chair against the wall so that his feet could find the ledge of the window.
“Wrestling with it.”
“Don’t you use a trot?” said Stover in some surprise, perceiving the absence of the handy, literal shortcut to recitation.
“Can’t afford to.”
“Why not?” said Stover, wondering if Regan was a gospel shark, after all.
“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 Co-op.” 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
