These were some of the men Scott had been going with but he could not see the point of Johnson’s remark.
“What’s that got to do with it?”
Johnson came out with it like a man. “Just this, Scotty. Those fellows all have dollars to your pennies and they are going a pace that you cannot stand. They don’t care whether they get through College in four years or forty. If you try to keep up with them you will soon be in debt up to your ears, and as soon as all your money’s gone they will drop you like a hot cake. You’re not in their class.”
“Not in their class!” Scott answered indignantly. “My family is as good as, or better than theirs, any day and that’s what counts. It does not matter home whether you have money or not as long as your family is all right. You can pick all the millionaires you want for company.”
“It may be all right there,” Johnson answered quietly, “but it won’t work here. If you have money it does not matter whether your father was a garbage man or the President of the United States; but believe me, you have to have the money.”
“It has not worked that way so far,” Scott answered defiantly, “and when it does I guess I’ll know it without being told.”
“And in the meantime you are getting in debt deeper every day and that with your father’s money.”
“Is that your business?” Scott cried angrily. It had caused him some compunction to ask his father to increase his allowance when he knew the poor doctor could ill afford it, and the shot hurt him.
“No,” Johnson sighed, “it’s none of my business, and I knew I should be unpopular for butting in, but I had to warn you. A man who comes from Massachusetts to Minnesota on an allowance of forty dollars per month and takes the amount of work that you are taking to save a year’s expenses is not in a position to run with a bunch of millionaires and flunk in all his studies. If you are behind in a single study at the end of the first eight weeks you’ll have to drop all that extra work, and at the rate you have been going you will be behind in a good deal more than one. I’m through now. Think about it before you get too mad,” and he rose to go to bed.
“I’ve never flunked in a subject yet,” Scott answered haughtily. “I can take care of my studies by myself and I do not consider that you can give me many points on my social activities.”