“Where’s your friend Mulcahy these days?” Peck asked, one evening early in February. “You don’t seem to be so thick with him as you were a while ago.”
“No,” answered Sam, indifferently. “I don’t seem to be.”
“What’s the matter?” pursued Peck. “Been scrapping?”
“No. We just don’t see as much of each other as we used to.”
Duncan fidgeted about a little, and then blurted out, “Of course it’s none of my business,—except as I’ve a little claim in the room and have some interest in knowing whom I’m likely to find here,—but I’d really like to be told whether you’re just taking a vacation from him or have got through with him for good.”
“Well, I guess I’m through with him for good,” confessed Sam.
Duncan’s face broke into a smile. “Glad to hear it! Only you ought to have done it long ago. When you ran up against him in the pole-vault, you probably began to see what sort of a fellow he is.”
“I haven’t run up against him in the pole-vault,” replied Sam. “We don’t practise together. It was something that happened last term that opened my eyes.”
“Oh, it was!” said Peck, in a tone between a question and an exclamation. He waited a little to see whether Archer was going to explain, but as Sam volunteered no information, he continued: “It’s about time for me to begin to work, if I’m going to pass off those exams in June. I couldn’t study here with that fellow hanging round.”
“I’m sorry if I drove you out,” said Sam, rather stiffly.