It was two evenings later, and Purdick was the only drop-in; with Dick gone out somewhere, as was coming to be his nightly habit. After the séance with the trigonometry, which was Purdick’s bugbear, the handicapped one sat back in his chair with his hands clasped behind his head.
“I’m making the most of you while I can, Donovan,” he said, with a tight-lipped smile. “When you hitch up with the Omegs I’ll lose you.”
“Who said I was going to hitch up with the Omegs?” Larry demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know just who said it; such things always get around.” Then: “I’m sorry.”
“What makes you sorry?”
“A lot of things that I have no right to say to an Omeg pledge.”
“I’m not a pledge—not yet.”
“You mean that I’m free to say what I please?”
“Sure you are. That is one of the privileges of this shop.”
“You’ll say I’m prejudiced, and maybe I am. But you must remember that I’m a year older in Sheddon than you are. I don’t condemn the frats as a whole; some fellows are just naturally joiners, and I suppose they can’t help it. But this particular frat, or at least the Sheddon chapter of it, stands for everything that I despise, Donovan. Two-thirds of the men in it are rich men’s sons, and the pace they set is pretty swift. Last year they lost four of their pledges—canned and sent home.”