“Better, at any rate, than some of your low stories, Brogten,” said Lillyston, firing up on his friend’s behalf.
“I don’t know. I like something manly.”
“Vice and manliness being identical, then, according to your notions?” said Lillyston.
Brogten muttered an angry reply, in which the only audible words were “confound” and “milksops.”
“Well spoken, advocate of sin and shame;
Known by thy bleating, Ignorance thy name,”
thought Julian; but he did not condescend to make any further answer.
“I hate that kind of fellow,” said Brogten, loud enough for the friends to hear, as they rose from the table; “fellows who think themselves everybody’s superiors, and walk with their noses in the air.”
“I wonder that you will still be talking, Brogten; nobody marks you,” said Lillyston, treating with the profoundest indifference a stupid calumny. But poisoned arrows like these quivered long and rankled painfully in Julian’s heart.
Yet no sensible boy would have given Julian’s reputation in exchange for that of Bruce; for in all except the mean and coarse minority, Julian excited either affection or esteem, and he had the rare inestimable treasure of some real and noble-hearted friends; while Bruce was too vain, too shallow, and too fickle to inspire any higher feeling than a mere transient admiration.
Latterly it had become known to the boys that Julian was going up to Saint Werner’s as a sizar, and being ignorant of the reasons which decided him, they had been much surprised. But the little clique of his enemies made this an additional subject of annoyance, and there were not wanting those who had the amazing bad taste to repeat to him some of their speeches. There are some who seem to think that a man must rather enjoy hearing all the low tittle-tattle of envious backbiters.