One result of the Shirley-Peck duel was to check the developing friendship of the inmates of 7 Hale. Duncan felt that Archer ought to have been on the watch when he passed Shirley at the finish—he took most indignantly the suggestion that Shirley was really ahead after all. Sam, having performed his part to the best of his ability, was disgusted with the childish obstinacy with which Duncan cherished his sense of injury. Coldness again marked the relations of the room-mates.
Another consequence of the bloody fray was the appearance of Shirley among the track men. Bruce got him out—no one could long resist the spell of Bruce’s winning manner—and Collins appointed him his proper task. They tried him at first on the longer stretches, but six hundred yards and even three hundred were soon found to be distances for which Shirley’s quick stride was not adapted. Then Collins set him to sprinting, and rubbed his hands with delight over the result. “Frenchie” took to starting and sprinting as a hound to a rabbit trail. In a week his starts were instantaneous, and his legs twinkled along the forty yards like the feet of a running mouse. Duncan was out too for the three hundred, and doing well, his friends said, though with old Chouder in the event, second place was the best he could hope for.
Mulcahy’s attitude toward Sam was changing. There had been no outward break in their relations, but Mulcahy had become distant in his greeting, and only showed his old cordiality when he had some special object to attain. He was busy now with what Duncan called “a new graft”—getting members for the Harvard Club, of which he was secretary and treasurer. Every boy who was preparing for Harvard was pressed to join in order to prove his loyalty. Every new member paid one dollar for a printed shingle signed by the secretary. The club had no meetings, except to elect officers and to be photographed. It had no expenses except the price of the shingle plate with fifty cheap prints, and the cost of inserting a group photograph in the school Annual.
“Easy money!” said Duncan in disgust, when Sam reported that he had joined. “He’s got my dollar too.”
“You don’t think he keeps the money, do you?” asked Sam, surprised at the implied charge.
“You don’t think he gives it back, do you?” retorted Duncan.
“No, but there must be miscellaneous expenses.”
“You can call it that if you want to. The account stands something like this: twenty-five shingles sold to new members at a dollar each, twenty-five dollars; twenty-five shingles bought at a dime each, two-fifty; picture in the Annual, five; miscellaneous, seventeen-fifty; balance in treasury at the beginning of next year, nothing. Conundrum: who got the seventeen-fifty? Your friend Mulcahy is a slick one!”
“He isn’t my friend!” declared Sam, stoutly.
“He is if he can get anything out of you; if he can’t, he’s your enemy.”