“No, sir,” replied John; “no vacation for me. Now that I’ve got into the grinding habit, you can bet I’m not going to slacken up. Do you know what I’ve been doing all winter?”
“Studying, I hope,” answered Melvin. “You’ve not been here very often except on such errands as this.”
“That’s right; and I’m doing a lot better than I did. I’m getting on to a lot of things that used to seem all shut up to me. The Dutch phases me the most; I don’t know why it is, but some way it won’t go down. I swallow hard at it, too. I’ve dropped the Greek, and am taking Latin over again. My French and mathematics are pretty fair, and I’m a regular shark at chemistry.”
Dick hooted; then checked himself suddenly. “They are all sharks in chemistry, I should judge by the reports the fellows give me.”
Curtis smiled grimly. “I’m as good as any; you ask some of them and see. It’s the first thing that I’ve really done well since I entered this old mill. The Dutch is the worst. I don’t think old Moore is just square about it either. He lays himself out on those fellows who know it all, and just skims by us poor dopes who are wallowing.”
“He’s good-natured and easy, isn’t he?” asked Dick.
“That depends. He isn’t savage like Richardson, nor satirical like Wells; but he lets a lot of tomfoolery go on in his class and smiles blandly at it all, and then suddenly gets wild and drops on some one like a hodful of bricks from the top of a ladder. As it’s usually the wrong person, it makes trouble.”
“What fellows are in it?” asked Dick, interested.
“Oh, various ones. Tompkins and Bosworth are the worst. Bosworth isn’t often suspected, because he is a kind of a favorite of the old man, and always lies out if he’s caught. Tompkins is smarter, and he won’t lie,—I like that in him; but he has cheek like a mountain.”
“What does he do?”