The door opened, and Roland Ditson came in without knocking.
CHAPTER XIX.
WHO IS THE TRAITOR?
"Hello, fellows!" cried Ditson. "How are yer, Jones! I am surprised to see you here. Is it possible you have let up cramming long enough to make a call? Why, I have even heard that you had your eye on some classical scholarship prize as soon as this. Everybody who knows you says you're a regular hard-working old dig."
"There are fools who know other people's business a great deal better than their own," said Dismal stiffly.
"That's right," nodded Ditson, who made a great effort to be rakish in his appearance, but always appeared rather foxy instead. "But I tell you this matter of burning the midnight oil and grinding is not what it's cracked up to be. It makes a man old before his time, and it doesn't amount to much after he has been all through it. Goodness knows we freshmen have to cram hard enough to get through! I am tired of it already. And then we have to live outside the pale, as it were. When we become sophs we'll be able to give up boarding houses and live in the dormitories. That's what I am anxious for."
"It strikes me that you are very partial to sophs," said Dismal, giving Roll a piercing look.
Ditson was not fazed.
"They're a rather clever gang of fellows," he said. "Freshmen are very new, as a rule. Of course there are exceptions, and—"