"'Away this life of woe,'" prompted Grant. "And it's like a 'tired child.'... No, don't change it! It'll look less as if you were copying a crib if you don't get it quite right. All right for that. Now, let's have the other ones."
At this point, Billings said violently in very forcible language, that poems were all such damn silly rot he couldn't learn them. And Grant, unsurprised and peremptory, answered that it didn't make a damned bit of difference how silly and rotten they were, they could be learned. "You've got brains enough to get a racing-dope sheet by heart, you can memorize poetry too. Now, your time's up. Beat it over to the Library where you can't talk and learn all three pieces! Remember you're to work 'em in, no matter what he asks. And if you have a chance, praise Shelley and knock Matthew Arnold. That's his line."
He turned to Neale, "You're Greenway, aren't you, with two years' conditions in French B?"
"No," said Neale, "I'm Crittenden."
"Oh, are you? Not on my list. You ought to have reported before. I can't do everything at the last minute. No matter, I'll give you till Greenway shows up. He's only a sub-end anyway, and we're lousy with ends. What did you flunk?"
"I didn't flunk anything," Neale admitted, half-ashamed that he might be considered a grind.
Grant jumped up. "What, nothing! And on the football squad, too." He stared hard at Neale as at a strange animal, and conjectured aloud, "Well, you must be a dub, of course. Never knew a Varsity man whose brain-cavity wasn't stuffed with cabbage-leaves."
Neale apparently showed some of the alarm this caused him, for the upper-classman added, "Oh, you'll get your chance just the same. Judging by the number of boobs Alpine and I are coaching, any dub who is eligible will have a smell at the Varsity, at least for the early games, till we can shove the regular Varsity men through their conditions."
"Everybody over to the gym.," roared a voice from the lower hallway.
Neale tossed his derby on one of the unpreëmpted cots and ran downstairs. As he bounded down flight after flight he could hear Grant leaning over the top banister yelling to the Manager to have Greenway found and delivered to him at once.