Mulcahy looked at him sharply. “Yes, it sounds well, but it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. If you tried it a month, you’d find out. Lots of fellows in this school look down on us scholarship fellows.”
“Not those whose opinion is worth anything,” answered Sam, promptly. “Not the best fellows, or the profs.”
“The profs don’t count,” said Mulcahy, “and it’s hard to tell who are the best fellows. There’s your room-mate, Peck, for instance. He speaks to me on the street in a kind of condescending way, and he wouldn’t be above taking a crib from me in recitation, but you don’t suppose he’d invite me up here, do you?”
Sam blushed and twisted in his chair; he felt thoroughly ashamed of his room-mate, sufficiently ashamed to report with open indignation the discussion which had recently been held on this very subject. But an instinctive regard for honorable dealing, an instinct which Sam felt even when his faulty reason would have misled him, closed his lips. “I’ve heard him speak highly of Kendrick,” he said, at length finding a clue. “He’s a scholarship man.”
“Kendrick!” ejaculated Mulcahy. “What’s there to him? A common grind who’s had the luck to be taken on the football squad!”
“Why, I thought he was a nice fellow,” remarked Archer, puzzled at Mulcahy’s vehemence. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Oh, he’s good enough as fellows go,” replied Mulcahy, “but it’s always seemed to me a green kind of goodness. He doesn’t know any better.”
“Know any better!” echoed Sam, still puzzled.
“I mean he isn’t very keen,” Mulcahy explained. “His wits are dull. You could take him in as easy as looking. He’s an honest fool, and good-natured.”
Sam did not answer. He was wondering why two fellows with the same hard problems of life to solve shouldn’t sympathize with each other. Mulcahy rose to go.