Sam shook his head.
“Be as careful with him as you can. Make him see that we want to get the offices out of the hands of the oligarchy, back into the school. It’s a shame that a democratic institution like the Academy should be bossed by the few fellows in the fraternities.”
“Isn’t it chiefly because the frats have got some of the best fellows in them?” asked Sam, innocently.
“No! They have some good fellows and a lot who wouldn’t be anything if they didn’t have money behind them. They put a frat man forward, and the rank and file just sit still and vote him in.”
“The rank and file don’t care much about it anyway.”
“They ought to, and they will when they’re aroused. It’s up to us to show them how to protect their rights.”
After Mulcahy went, Sam compared the statement which his guest had just made about the duel, with the reasons which he had given the day before when he refused to act as second. “He was really afraid to have anything to do with it,” he mused. “I don’t believe those fellows he’s so down on would have gone back on a friend in that way. Still, I ought not to blame him for that; he has his way to make; he can’t afford to get into trouble with the profs.” The contrasting conduct of Kendrick, who also had his way to make, occurred to him, and shook his faith in his own argument. “But Ken is a natural scrapper,” he reassured himself. “Ken would do ’most anything to see a fight.”
One thing, however, Ken would not do—vote for Mulcahy for office. That Archer discovered as soon as he broached the subject.
“I wouldn’t vote for him for street sweeper!” he declared. “Mulcahy’s a pig, and a grafter. He’s all for Mulcahy, and for nobody and nothing else. If he wants a thing, on general principles I don’t want it. If he says a course is right, I’m sure it isn’t. He works everything and everybody he can get hold of. He’s got the faculty hypnotized into believing he’s an angel. I wouldn’t trust him around the corner.”
“He’s a mighty able fellow,” replied Archer, who charged Kendrick’s vehemence up against prejudice and envy; “a lot abler than Metcalf, or Dupont, or—”