With the resolve, all the fret and fever went from him. He felt a new confidence and a new maturity.
“When I speak again, I shall have the right,” he said solemnly. “And she shall see that I am not a mere boy. That I will show her soon!”
When he came again into the domain of the college, he suddenly felt all the littleness of the ambitions that raged inside those self-sufficient walls.
“Lord, what have I been doing all this time—what does it count for? Brocky is right; it isn’t what you do here, it’s what you are ready to do when you go out. Thank Heaven, I can see it now.” And secure in the knowledge that the honors he rated so lightly were his, he added: “There’s only one thing that counts—that’s your own self.”
It was after the dinner hour, and he hesitated; a little tired of his own company, longing for the diversion another personality would bring, and seeking someone as far removed from his own point of view as possible, he halted before Durfee, and sent his call to the top stories:
“Oh, Ricky Ricketts, stick out your head.”
Above a window went up, and a fuzzy head came curiously forth.
“Wot’ell, Bill?”
“It’s Stover, Dink Stover. Come down.”
“Somethin’ doin’?”
“You bet.”
Presently, Ricketts’s beanstalk figure came flopping out of the entry.
“What’s up, Dink?”
“I’m back too late for supper. Come on down with me to Mory’s and keep me company, and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“Did I hear the word ‘buy’?” said Ricketts, in the manner then made popular by the lamented Pete Dailey.
“You did.”
“Lead me to it.”
At Mory’s, two or three men whom he didn’t know were at the senior table. Le Baron and Reynolds, prospective captain of the crew and chairman of the News, respectively, men of his own society, gave him a hearty, “Hello, Dink,” and then stared curiously at Ricketts, whose general appearance neither conformed to any one fashion nor to any two. Gimbel, the politician, was in the off room with three of the more militant anti-sophomore society leaders. The two parties saluted in regulation style.
“Hello, you fellows.”
“Howdy, there.”
Stover, sitting down, saw Gimbel’s perplexed glance at his companion, and thought to himself:
“I’ve got Gimbel way up a tree. I’ll bet he thinks I’m trying to work out some society combine against him.”
The thought recalled to him all the increasing bitterness of the anti-sophomore society fight which had swept the college. There was talk even of an open mass meeting. He remembered that Hunter had mentioned it, and for a moment he was inclined to put the question direct to Gimbel. But his mood was alien to controversy, and Louis, with sidelong, beady eyes, and a fragrant aroma, was waiting the order.
Ricketts had, among twenty Yankee devices for greasing his journey through college, a specialty of breaking in new pipes, one of which he now produced, with an apologetic:
“You don’t mind, do you, if I crack my lungs on this appetizing little trifle?”
“I say, Ricketts,” said Stover, trying to keep off his mind the one subject, “is that all a joke about your breaking in pipes?”
“Straightest thing in the world.”
“What do you charge?”
“Thirty-five cents and the tobacco.”
“You ought to charge fifty.”
“I’m going to next year. You think I’m loony?” said Ricketts.
“I’m not sure.”
“Dink, my boy, I’ll be a millionaire in ten years. You know what I’m figuring out all this time? I’m going at this scientifically. I’m figuring out the number of fools there are on the top of this globe, classifying ’em, looking out what they want to be fooled on. I’m making an exact science of it.”
“Go on,” said Dink, amused and perplexed, for he was trying to distinguish the serious and the humorous.
“What’s the principle of a patent medicine?—advertise first, then concoct your medicine. All the science of Foolology is: first, find something all the fools love and enjoy, tell them it’s wrong, hammer it into them, give them a substitute and sit back, chuckle, and shovel away the ducats. Bread’s wrong, coffee’s wrong, beer’s wrong. Why, Dink, in the next twenty years all the fools will be feeding on substitutes for everything they want; no salt—denatured sugar—anti-tea—oiloline—peanut butter—whale’s milk—et cetera, et ceteray, and blessing the name of the fool-master who fooled them.”
“By Jingo,” said Stover, listening to this jumble of words, entranced, “I believe you’re right. And so you’ve reduced it to a science, eh—Foolology?”
Ricketts, half in earnest, never entirely in jest, abetted by newly arriving tobies, was off again on his pet theories of business imagination, disdaining the occasional gibes that were flung at him from Gimbel’s table.
When Le Baron and Reynolds passed out, with curious glances, Stover was weak with laughter. Later arrivals dropping in joined them, egging on the inventor.
Stover, who had been busily consulting his watch, left at half-past eight on a sudden resolve. The farcical interruption that had temporarily drawn him out of himself, had cleared his head, and brought him a sudden authoritative decision.
He went directly to the Storys’, and, entering the parlor, found a group of his crowd there, dinner finished, trying out the latest comic opera chorus.
He came in quite coldly self-possessed, shook hands, and immediately jumped into the conversation, which was all on the crisis in the sophomore societies. Jean Story was at the piano, a little more serious than usual. At his entrance, she looked up with sudden wonder and confusion. He came to her, and in taking her hand inclined his head in great respect, but did not speak to her. He had but one desire, to show her that he was not a boy but a man, and that he could rise to the crisis which he had brought on himself.
Hunter and Tommy Bain had been arguing for no compromise, Bob Story and Hungerford were of the opinion that the time had come to enlarge the membership of the societies, and to destroy their exclusiveness.
On the sofa, the little Judge, a spectator, never intimating
