“Wait: we’ve chased it back to the shop work. Now let’s take another tack. Have you got any ‘lame dogs’ in the shops—fellows that follow you around and try to get helped?”
“Yes, one; fellow named Crawford. He is sticking to me yet, though goodness knows there isn’t any reason why he should.”
“Hah!” said Dick, dropping into a chair. “Snitty Crawford, eh? I don’t much like that big fumbler, Larry.”
“I don’t either. But he’s such a miserable dub in Prac. Mechan., that I felt as though somebody ought to give him a boost.”
“Know him any, outside of the class work?”
Larry shook his head, and Dick went on:
“It just so happens that I do. He’s the worst sort that ever gets into college; a fawner on some fellow with more money than brains. Off the campus he’s Bry Underhill’s shadow.”
Larry jumped as if some one had slapped him. In a flash little Purdick’s warning, long since forgotten, came back to him—“a spender always gets a crowd around him—of the kind that’ll do his dirty work for him.” Could it be possible——
“Say, Dick,” he broke out savagely; “do you suppose anybody could have been framing me up to ‘bust’ on this shop work, right along?”
“Why—if you had an enemy that hated you hard enough: I’ll admit that’s what I had in mind, Larry; but it can’t be. A fellow who would do such a thing as that couldn’t stay twenty-four hours in Old Sheddon.”