“Nobody but that damned Dilford Bancroft and that gang,” continued John. “Billy could know any one in the class that’s worth knowing; he really does know every one. But you understand what I mean, they’re not his friends; he doesn’t go to their rooms, and they don’t come to ours. It’s always Bancroft and just a few sports like that.”
“Cheap sports?” Haydock questioned. He knew no more of Bancroft than that he was a decorative young person whose somewhat liberal views on the subject of training for a foot-ball eleven had stirred a ripple of indignation throughout the college in the autumn, and provoked some caustic reflections in the editorial columns of the “Harvard Crimson.”
“No, I don’t suppose they’re ‘cheap’ sports,” admitted the honest John,—“not the way you mean.”
“Expensive sports, then?”
“Well, if you mean that they seem to know how to do the things that oughtn’t to be done at all, the way they ought to be done, if you do them—” began John, a trifle obscurely.
“Yes, that’s precisely what I mean.”
“Then they are ‘expensive’ sports, I suppose.”
“And Billy has become absorbed by them?”
“He doesn’t care to see any one else, as far as I know.”
“Perhaps it’s merely a passing phase.”