"It isn't as strong as that. It isn't that the fellows dislike you, Ward. That isn't it."
"It's that they don't like me," said Ward bitterly, determined to say the words which he perceived that Jack would not.
"I think it'll come out all right, Ward, if you'll have patience and wait. It isn't very pleasant, I know," he hastily added as he saw an expression of pain and mortification sweep over Ward's face, "but it'll all come right, I'm sure."
"And meanwhile I'm to sit still and bear it all like a martyr on a pole."
"No, not that--not that--but----"
"But what?"
"But I wish you'd take a little more pains to make the fellows like you."
"Don't you remember, though, what the doctor said about the fellows that tried to do the popular act, how they never succeeded and the school was always down on them?"
"Yes, I remember, and it's true too, but that doesn't mean that a fellow's not to take a little trouble to be agreeable--I mean to go out of his way. Forgive me, Ward. It hurts me worse than it does you, but you asked me the honest question and I'm trying hard, honestly I am, to see a way out of it. Now there's Big Smith. He's never in a scrape. He doesn't know what the word mischief means, but then he isn't over popular, you know."
"Yes, I know; but I hope I'm not like Big Smith. I suppose I'll have to take it out in being respected, even if I'm not liked."