“Any preference among the boys?” asked the lieutenant. “You can’t have Bert for a room-mate this term, you know. The second sergeant of his company will be chummed on him.”
Don replied that he didn’t care who he had for a companion, so long as he was a well-behaved boy; whereupon the lieutenant beckoned to a negro porter whom he called “Rosebud,” and directed him to take Don’s trunk up to No. 45, third floor.
“By the way, I suppose that that fellow who has just gone into the superintendent’s room with Bert is a crony of yours?” continued the young officer.
“He is from Mississippi,” said Don. He did not wish to publish the fact that Lester Brigham was no friend of his, for that would prejudice the students against him at once. Lester was likely to have a hard time of it at the best, and Don did not want to say or do anything that would make it harder for him.
“All right,” said the officer. “I will take pains to see that he is chummed on some good fellow.”
“You needn’t put yourself to any trouble for him on my account,” said Don in a low tone, at the same time turning his back upon a sprucely-dressed but rather brazen-faced boy, who persisted in crowding up close to him and Egan, as if he meant to hear every word that passed between them. “He is nothing to me, and I wish he was back where he came from. He’ll wish so too, before he has been here many days. I said everything I could to induce his father to keep him at home, but he——”
“Let’s take a walk as far as the gate,” said Egan, seizing Don by the arm and nodding to Hopkins and Curtis. “You stay here, Enoch,” he added, turning to the sprucely-dressed boy.
“What’s the reason I can’t go too?” demanded the latter.
“Because we don’t want you,” replied Egan, bluntly. “I told you before we left home, that you needn’t expect to hang on to my coat-tails. Make friends with the members of your own company, for they are the only associates you will have after school begins.”
“But they are all strangers to me, and you won’t introduce me,” said Enoch.