“I don’t know as I could make you understand, though I guess maybe Dick Maxwell would. I’ve got a horrible temper, Purdy.”
“Yes you have!”—with what was meant to be scathing irony. “You’re just too easy for any common kind of use—chicken-hearted where other people are concerned, I’d call it!”
“Don’t you make any such mistake as that,” Larry said quickly, with the gloom in his eyes changing swiftly to the fighting glow that came into them when he was struggling for that extra yard on the foot-ball field. “I could smash every man in that gang and never turn a hair!”
“Then why don’t you do it?”
“Well, partly because I don’t dare to.”
“Afraid?”—incredulously.
“Yes; afraid of myself.”
“Ump!” said little Purdick; “I wear a six-and-three-quarters hat. I guess you’ll have to make it plainer than that for a head the size of mine.”
“I’m just afraid to let go, that’s all. You’ve read in war stories how men, soldiers, who have been decent, sober fellows all their lives get to be brutes and devils when they let the brute-and-devil part of ’em come to the top. I’ve been holding my brute-and-devil down ever since I was a little kid, and I don’t dare to let it get up now. That’s all there is to it, Purdy.”
“So you’ll let this lying story go on spilling itself all over the place, and lose your chance for the ’Varsity, and maybe get a call-down from the faculty, all because you’re afraid you might let go all holds if you went after the fellows who are trying to do you up?”