V
THE RED-WAGON SCHOLARSHIP
Larry’s parting word to Dick had been altogether hearty and cheerful, as we have seen; but after the parting had settled down into a fact accomplished, Larry spent some pretty lonesome evenings. Not because there wasn’t company enough; there is always plenty of that in any college boarding-house, to say nothing—in Larry’s case—of the lame dogs that came straggling in to get a boost over the mathematical hill. But an evening roomful of more or less hilarious and racketing fellows isn’t everything; and after the crowd broke up there was always the empty chair on the opposite side of the study table, and Dick’s bed, made up and never slept in, to remind Larry of his loss.
Meanwhile, there was Mrs. Grant to be considered. After a week had gone by without any move having been made to put anybody in with him, Larry cornered the motherly person one afternoon in the lower hall and asked her about it.
“If you could find somebody you’d like to room with, of course I’d be glad,” said the house-mother. “But I don’t like to ask you to put up with a stranger.”
“You know of somebody?” Larry asked.
“Yes; there is a young man here taking post-graduate work for his Master’s degree. He’s in the Chemical, and he’d like to come.”
Larry had an instantaneous and rather disquieting picture of himself rooming with something worse than an upperclassman—a man who had already been graduated, who was probably working against time, and who would be likely to object most strenuously to the lame dogs and other visitors.
“Will you let me look around a little and see if I can find somebody first?” he asked; and the reply was as kindly as his own mother could have made it.