Dick flapped his hands in despair.
“You’re the limit, Larry! That ‘class’ notion of yours, in free-for-all America, is simply bunk!”
“Is it?” Larry queried sharply. “I can prove what I say. Look at little Purdick—waiting on table in Hassler’s restaurant to earn his way: does anybody ask him to get in on any of the try-outs? Not so you could notice it. Look at Jungman, tending furnaces and wheelbarrowing ashes: Saturday, when some of the fellows were going for a hike, one of ’em said: ‘Let’s make Jungman take time off and go with us.’ Were there any frantic shouts of approval? Not on your life. Instead, Banker Waldrich said, ‘Oh, nit! he isn’t our sort.’”
Again Dick made the gesture of despair.
“I guess you’re hopeless!” he gave up; and with that he went to get his own book.
Though he said this—meaning it at the moment—Dick didn’t let up on the athletic urgencies; and faithfully, in season and out of season, he labored with Larry. As sometimes happens, even in an engineering college, a Freshman class had entered with rather scanty material in it for the class teams. And, since the ’Varsity teams have to grow up out of incoming material, the athletic “scouts” were digging hard for Freshman candidates. Unhappily, however, the fellows who approached Larry always seemed to rub him the wrong way of the grain; or he thought they did, which amounted to the same thing.
After all, it was less Dick’s urgings than a word spoken by Mr. Waddell, the pattern-shop instructor, that turned the tide. It was on an afternoon while the try-outs were still going on, and Larry was doing a little extra work in the shop. Passing through, the instructor stopped at Larry’s lathe, and there was a little talk turning upon Larry’s absence from the athletic field when everybody else was there.
Much to Larry’s surprise, the instructor took sides with Dick and the other urgers: it was a student’s duty to uphold, not only the honor of his college in class work, but in the “activities” as well. Larry thought it all over soberly, and that evening made a large and generous concession to Dick.
“This athletic business,” he began, without preface; “I’ve about made up my mind to try out for the foot-ball squad.”
The sudden shift nearly knocked Dick speechless, but he caught his breath and pounded the shifter on the back.