III
THE LAME DOGS
Old Sheddon, calling itself pretty strictly an engineering school, is peculiar in one respect: it has no dormitories on its campus. Its two thousand (more or less) undergraduates live in clubs, fraternity houses, and with the neighbors. Practically everybody in the college town takes roomers and boarders, and among these private houses the “Man-o’-War” was popular for two reasons: Mrs. Grant was a most motherly home body; and her pies were, as Dickie Maxwell put it, “simply out of sight.”
Dick and Larry had the largest of the upstairs rooms, with two windows on the side toward the street and the campus. While the college year was still in its infancy, it began to be remarked that these windows were seldom dark in the evening. Which meant that at least one of the room’s occupants knew what he wanted and was going stubbornly after it.
“Great Peter!” Dick complained, one evening after the Thanksgiving game had closed the foot-ball season, “aren’t you ever going to take any time off at all, Larry? See here; I’ve got an ‘invite’ to a blowout at the Omeg house to-night, and it includes you. Cut out the studious stuff for a change and surprise yourself by coming along to mix and mingle for an hour or so.”
“Nix on the social stuff,” grumbled the big, red-headed fellow at the study table; “I’ve got two English themes to write.”
“Which means that you don’t want to go,” Dick charged discontentedly.
“All right; you can put it that way, if you like. You know what I think about the frats.”