When Rob Owen quietly announced one morning in May that his father was thinking of sending him to Seaton the next year, Carle was immediately seized with a desire to accompany him. The circulars and letters arrived with their tempting invitations. Enthusiastic Alumnus performed his task, cleverly brightening his description of the opportunities of the school with seductive pictures of school life and sport and joyous fellowship. To the general ambition of the young American to make the most of his life was added the particular ambition of the natural ball player for a wider field for his genius. When Mr. Carle hesitated at the expense which he could not afford, Enthusiastic Alumnus pointed to the long list of scholarships offered and to the many opportunities for self-help open to the earnest student. Ned, grown eager and determined, vowed to content himself with what his father could supply and earn whatever more he needed by his own efforts.
There was reason in the boy's hope. In the high school Ned Carle was counted a good scholar. The teachers were agreed that with equally faithful work the pitcher of the school nine could have ranked far above the catcher. In a certain quickness of perception and facility of expression combined with a memory at least temporarily retentive, he possessed what boys usually consider the most important elements of scholarship. Of industry, the great and fundamental essential, he had as yet shown little development; but as this is the quality least admired among boys and often the last acquired, neither Ned himself nor his teachers as a whole considered the fault a serious one.
Ned's persistence, seconded by the fluent superlatives of Enthusiastic Alumnus, was more than a match for Mr. Carle's doubts. By midsummer the question was settled. Among the one hundred and twenty-three trunks distributed by Laughlin and his express wagons on the first day of the fall term were two marked "Terryville, Pa."
HAIL TO THE PITCHER
The two Terryville lads roomed apart. Owen had already engaged his room in Hale before Carle decided to accompany him to Seaton; the latter found cheaper quarters in Carter. The difference in character between the two boys appeared in the experiences of their first days in school. Before the first Sunday Ned seemed to be on friendly terms with every fellow in the entry. Rob, on the other hand, hardly knew the names of the occupants of his own floor.
The most interesting of Owen's neighbors were Donald and Duncan Peck, two lively specimens belonging to his own class and section, as indistinguishable and mischievous a brace of twins as ever looked upon the world as a happy hunting-ground, and on the inhabitants thereof as fair game. The tales concerning the Pecks passed on by his room-mate Simmons, Rob considered barefaced attempts to impose on his simplicity. Later he found that many of them were true. Between the room which he occupied and that of the twins lay, according to one informant, a natural feud. At least such had prevailed the year before in the days of Tompkins, Rob's predecessor. He was advised by Lindsay, the football man who roomed opposite, to ignore this fact and avoid a continuance of the custom; and the stories in circulation concerning the amenities of Tompkins and the Pecks seemed to prove that the advice was both kindly and sound. Beyond Lindsay came Payner, a little, saturnine, black-haired, dark-visaged lower middler from the extreme Southwest; and opposite Payner the two Moons. The other room on the floor was tenanted by a dull-witted toiler named Smith. With Smith an unfeeling Faculty had yoked Crossett, a volatile senior, who spent as little time as possible in the society of his room-mate. Durand shared Lindsay's quarters.
Payner was no ordinary individual. In recitation, Rob was informed, he halted and stumbled, pretending to know what he evidently did not know, and receiving corrections with an ungracious if not defiant air. Outside he cultivated a morose and forbidding manner, and went his solitary way as if he scorned society. Whether this unsociability was due to homesickness or sensitiveness or a naturally ugly disposition, Rob was for a considerable time in doubt. He was at first inclined to charge it up against homesickness, feeling himself for a time the forlornness of his exile from the home circle, and the burden of his independence. At the end of a fortnight, however, when all trace of discontent had vanished from Owen's mind, Payner remained as sour and taciturn as ever. Rob next ascribed the fellow's conduct to shyness, and put himself to some inconvenience to show himself friendly. All to no purpose; Payner's only salutation was still a niggardly nod of the head and a scowl. He then tried to make a call on pretence of borrowing a book; Payner merely projected his head through the partly opened door and remarked that he had no books to lend. Thus repeatedly discouraged, Rob gave up his benevolent attempts in disgust; the fellow was too disagreeable to waste a thought upon!