“You’ve got to believe in them, because they are. You can gloze it over all you want to, but that doesn’t change the fact. You’ve got to take sides, whether you want to or not.”
“I don’t see it that way at all,” said Larry stubbornly, meaning that he was beginning to try mighty hard not to see it that way.
“You’d better see it. You’re here for the same thing I am: that’s to get an education. If the doing of it is going to make you over into the kind of fellow that’s ashamed of his folks and the way they live and have to live—”
“That’ll be about enough of that kind of talk, Purdy,” Larry exploded. “I’m not built that way.”
Little Purdick closed his eyes.
“All right; we won’t argue about it. But I’ll take you on another tack. You may not know it, but you’ve already got a following here. I guess it began when you pulled the ’Varsity out of the hole in the Rockford Poly game; anyway, you’ve got it. If you really believe what you say—that there isn’t any such thing as ‘classes,’ or oughtn’t to be—it’s up to you to do the biggest thing that’s ever been done for Sheddon. But you’ll lose the chance if you go into a frat.”
Larry shook his head. “You’ve got me a mile over my depth, now, Purdy. What are you raving about?”
Purdick went on, still with his eyes closed.
“I can see you getting a bunch of the fellows—regular fellows—around you in a frat that would be a frat in the sure-enough meaning of the word; a sort of brotherhood that wouldn’t know either rich or poor or anything else but just the college fellowship. I can see the thing growing and growing, until after a while even the Greek Letters themselves would see the beauty of it and help it along. I....” he stopped suddenly and sat up with a bitter little laugh. “Forget it!” he broke out harshly. “I take spells like that sometimes when I’m not responsible for what I say. Good-night,” and he was gone.
For some little time after Purdick went away, Larry sat with his chin propped in his hands, the good gray eyes staring at the opposite wall and seeing nothing. Once more he was stumbling around in the valley of indecision. What Purdick had said about being loyal to his clan—the work-for-wages clan to which his father and all of his people belonged—had stirred up all the old questionings. Was it true, what Purdick had asserted, that college, or the fraternity and social side of it, would turn a fellow against his own people? Larry couldn’t believe it; and yet....