“It’s a good thing to be strong, but a lot depends on spirit,” began Harrison. What further he may have intended to say, we shall never know, for the sight of Mr. Spaulding standing at the head of the stairs put a sudden gag upon his lips.
CHAPTER III
ARCHIBALD DUNN
Roger Hardie knew absolutely no one at Westcott’s when he moved into his room at Adams’s that fall. His father was engaged in the Argentine trade; and the day after Roger was safely established in school the whole family sailed for Buenos Aires to spend the winter there. He took his fate stoically, trying hard to persuade himself that he should soon feel at home, but he could not avoid the sense of isolation and exclusion which comes naturally to one of a very few new boys among a great many very intimate old ones; and he lacked entirely the aptitude for quick friendships. Boys are seldom temperate in their opinions of their own merits. Eliminate the over-confident who run to freshness and the under-confident who lack courage to assert themselves, and there remain but a small percentage who wisely follow the middle course. The over-modest in the end is likely to outstrip the over-bold, whose rash spirit is easily broken by unexpected and humiliating defeats. The average boy, however, takes very little thought for ultimate results. He lives vividly in the present, is captivated by boldness and dash and ready wit, ranks caution with timidity, and suspects steadiness to be mere feebleness in disguise.
Roger was naturally reticent; he was likewise inclined to regard himself as neither attractive nor clever. The first impression which he produced on his mates at Adams’s was that of mediocrity. They took him at his own valuation and disregarded him. The consciousness that he wasn’t considered worth while increased his reticence, and at the same time stirred his obstinacy. He certainly didn’t care for the boys if they didn’t care for him. He would go one way, and let them go another.
Hardie’s pique was enhanced by the apparently different reception accorded to another new Adamsite, Archibald Dunn. As a matter of fact, the principle followed by the boys in the treatment of the two cases was identical: each was accepted at the outset at his face value. While Hardie made no claim to ability, importance, or friends among the great, Dunn’s method was to assume everything, to throw himself frankly on the credulity and friendliness of his new companions. Of course he played football; he had been end on the Westport High School at the beginning of last season, but a shoulder bruise got in the practice had thrown him out of the regular games. He liked baseball better; he and a friend of his, who made the Yale Freshmen, used to be the battery of a corking little nine they got up at their summer place. His favorite sport was automobiling; in his first half-hour in Tracy’s room he told five astonishing stories of marvellous escapes from death or the police. He sailed, too,—used to take charge of his uncle’s forty-footer in cruises. Dunn’s manners were undeniably easy. In twenty-four hours he knew all the small boys at Adams’s by their nicknames, and treated the older ones as if they were intimates of years’ standing.
The Tracys, Ben and Louis, might smile a little incredulously at the broadest of Dunn’s claims, but he amused them, and, provisionally at least, they accepted him. “He’s good sport, anyway,” said Ben, on the second day of school, while describing the Adams household to Sumner. “He can talk more than any person I ever saw, and he likes himself to beat the band, but he seems to be a good fellow to have round.”
“What about Hardie?”
“Oh, he’s a zero, a good little boy that never speaks unless he’s spoken to. He sat up in his room all last evening, grinding at algebra and Latin. Just think of being so fierce about the first day’s lessons!”
“All the new ones do that,” opined Sumner; “they’re scared.”