“The fact is, Chips, you’re such a good old chap yourself that you want everybody else to be the same as you. You wouldn’t hurt a fellow’s feelings, so you can’t forgive the chaps who do it without thinking. Not one in a hundred makes as much of things as you do, or takes things so to heart. But that’s because you’re what you are, Chips; you oughtn’t to be down on everybody who doesn’t happen to be built as straight and true.”
“Don’t be too sure that I’m either!” exclaimed Carpenter, flinching unaccountably.
“You’re only about the straightest chap in the whole school, Chips. Everybody knows that, I should think.”
“I’ve a good mind to set everybody right!” cried Carpenter, worked up to more than he had dreamed of saying, a wild impulse burning in his eyes. “I can’t see you bunked for nothing, when others including me have done all sorts of things to deserve it. Yes, Jan, including me! You think I’ve been so straight! So I was in the beginning; so I am now, if you like, but I’ve not been all the time. Don’t stop me. I won’t be stopped; but that’s about all I’ve got to say. I’ve always wanted you to know. You’re the only fellow in the place I care much for, who cares much for me, though not so much——”
“Yes I do, Chips, yes I do! I never thought so much of you as I do this minute.... I don’t say it never crossed my mind.... But don’t you make yourself out worse than you ever were, even to me!”
“I don’t want to.... It didn’t go on so long, and it’s all over now.... But I shall get the præpostor’s medal when I leave—unless I’m man enough to refuse it—and you’ve been bunked for standing by a fellow who never would have stood by you!”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Chips,” said Jan, gently.
“No, I’m not. It’s the other way about.”
“You don’t know how Evan’s stood by me all these years.”
Carpenter maintained a strange silence—very strange in him, just then especially—a silence that made him ashamed and yet exultant.