A spectacled Senior dissented at once. "It wouldn't be the thing, fellows. Those strikers may be in the right, for all we know."
Jervis howled his disgust. "That's what comes of joining the Socialist Study Club! Falkhaven's a regular anarchist. Why, it's a great idea! Are you on, Neil?"
"Sure!" The Texan roused himself to answer briskly. "If Pell'll come too."
"I'm for it," Pelham assented quietly.
The constant deference and affection displayed toward his big-hearted roommate hurt him, against his will. For all his ability in studies and on the mat, Pelham was not popular. He had never been accepted in the higher circles of Sheff life, the Colony and Cloister groups; and he in turn held himself aloof from the run of the class.
He was a thorough-going snob, for all his talk of democracy. Anywhere in the South, which held the finest people in the country, a Judson would be known and recognized, and given his proper place. These Yankees, no matter how nice they might be personally, were Republicans; in the South, only negroes and turncoats belonged to that party. At meetings of the Southern Club, he had seconded the resolution asking that negro students be provided with a separate gymnasium and eating hall. It had furnished a week's laugh to the University; hot-headedly, he resented this. He felt that the leading men held him merely on tolerance; he shrank in upon himself.
This feeling of isolation was not entirely unwelcome. He had become used to it in his mountain days. Here it had driven him to the College Library, where he had mastered all its bulky volumes on mining and kindred phases of engineering. He branched from these into higher mathematics, until he could stump his instructor on the fourth dimension. The previous Christmas holiday, he had turned to modern European drama, and had covered what he could find in an amazing short time; although it was not easy to stomach such plays as "The Weavers," and some of Shaw's dramatic maunderings.
His college loyalty, and class loyalty, in the social sense, continued at a high pitch; and he was among the first to arrive at the office of the New Haven Electric, and to sign up for strike-duty.
He spent an intense morning learning the mechanism of the car—it was not difficult, for a good driver; and he knew automobiles thoroughly.
He was put at a controller on the Savin Rock run, with a halfback for his conductor, and two guards furnished by a Newark agency to aid the uniformed policemen in preserving order through the rioting poorer districts.