“There are plenty of others who are with me in this. So don’t get the idea that there’s nothing more left in life for you, Lester.”
“I guess I was talking like a fool, a few minutes ago, Dave. There’s something in this idea that the fellows have about me—that I’m too temperamental. I’m glad you dropped in to cheer me up, even though it should turn out that there’s no chance for me.”
“There is,” said David. “Just wait and see.”
Lester, whose hope and ambition were stirred, could not wait and see. He was bound to be active in furthering his own interests, and he conceived that he could best do it by being more pleasant and genial than ever with every one. He began to call by their first names fellows with whom he had only a slight acquaintance; and he struck up an acquaintance with members of the class who had hitherto been too obscure or too remote from his orbit to win his attention. The spontaneity of his manner and the fact that he was so prominent a personage caused many of those whom he thus approached to be flattered by his advances; others resented them as obviously insincere and inspired by a selfish motive. The supporters of the rival candidates, Farrar and Colby, criticized his tactics freely; some ill feeling grew up among the various partisans. But Lester himself, however indiscreet he may have sometimes been in showing that he was eager for every vote, never uttered any words of detraction or disparagement about the other candidates and did nothing to incur their enmity.
In the excitement of his canvass he did not turn with any zest to his college work. As a result of his neglect the college office notified him that, if by a certain period he failed to show improvement, he would be placed on probation. Not only would this mean that he would be debarred from participation in all athletic sports, but it would also no doubt seriously affect his chances of being made marshal. The class would be unlikely to confer its highest honor upon one who had failed to maintain a creditable standing in his studies, especially when such failure would mean that he would be ineligible for the varsity baseball nine, on which he had played the preceding year.
“I wish I could call on you to help me the way you used to in the old days at St. Timothy’s,” Lester said to David, after telling him of his troubles. “You used to get me over some pretty hard places.”
“I’d do anything I could to help you,” replied David, “but the trouble is you’re not taking courses that I know anything about. English composition is the only thing we have together, and there’s no way that I can see of helping you with that—beyond criticizing anything that you write. Of course that I’ll be glad to do.”
“I wouldn’t have any trouble with English composition if I could find time to write the themes,” said Lester. “But I’ve missed some of them, and now I’ve got to put in all the time getting ready for the examination in the other courses.”
“You’d better buckle right down to work,” advised David. “Fire your friends out of your room when they come to see you. Tell Richard he mustn’t speak to you, and don’t let yourself talk to him. Keep your nose in a book all day and half the night. Do that, and I guess you’ll come through. You’ve got to come through; it won’t do for you to be put on probation.”
“I know it,” groaned Lester. He reached for a book. “All right, I’ll begin right now. Get out of here, you Dave, and let a fellow study.”