“Oh, rot! What’s a few cigarettes? It’s just a question of getting ahead of the profs. The faculty is on one side and we’re on the other. They try to make us do what they want, and we try to do what we please. They’ll soak us if they can, and we beat ’em when we can. This isn’t a Sunday-school; it’s a little piece cut out of the world. If you’re going to get on here, you’ve got to shake your kindergarten ideas, and play the game.”
Mulcahy soon took himself away, and Sam went early to bed to sleep off his low spirits. On the next day he made an afternoon call at the Sedgwicks’ and yielded readily to an invitation to supper. Miss Margaret was a mighty sorceress in dispelling the grumps. In the evening he attended the Christian Fraternity meeting, addressed by a distinguished professor of Yale. Mulcahy sat in a front row, and listened devoutly.
CHAPTER VIII
SLOW TO ANGER
Regular exercise in the gymnasium began immediately after the Hillbury game. In Sam’s squad was a fellow from South Boston named Dennis Runyon. Runyon possessed a head ornamented with stiff, bristly hair on top, a stubby nose and pimply cheeks in front, and flaring clam-shell ears at the side. In the vacant spaces of his brain lurked, with other delusions of a large and general ignorance, a fixed idea that every man who was not positively effeminate admired a pugilist. Runyon’s notions as to the meaning of education were hazy; he had come to Seaton with the somewhat vague hope of bettering his prospects in life, bearing a letter of introduction from a cousin who had worked his way through the school and was appreciative of the help which it had given him. This letter from a faithful alumnus procured Runyon’s admittance. Entering a lower class in which the work was, for him, largely review, he gained rank high enough to receive a provisional scholarship.
But Dennis Runyon’s ambitions were not limited to gaining a foothold on the toilsome, uphill road which the self-made man must travel; he thirsted for distinction, especially distinction in athletics. The school football team did not desire his services; his class captain gave him a trial, and quickly dropped him for a smaller man who used his head more and his fists less. The football season passed, the uneventful winter months were at hand, his lesson marks were tending steadily downward. The name of Runyon was still obscure in Seaton.
Dennis went home for Thanksgiving, and offered what excuses he could for his failure to make the expected reputation.
“Don’t you know any fellows at all?” demanded Pete Runyon, an older brother, who had brought some glory upon the family by winning public matches at various boxing clubs.
“Not many,” replied Dennis, candidly. “They don’t take much notice of a new fellow.”
“Why don’t ye get up a fight, then? That’ll show ’em what kind of a man ye are.”