“I mean to have a shot at the History,” I admitted. “Wish I was better at dates.”
“It's always two-thirds dates,” Dan assured me, to my discouragement. “Old Florret thinks you can't eat a potato until you know the date that chap Raleigh was born.”
“I've prayed so hard that I may win the History prize,” I explained to him. I never felt shy with Dan. He never laughed at me.
“You oughtn't to have done that,” he said. I stared. “It isn't fair to the other fellows. That won't be your winning the prize; that will be your getting it through favouritism.”
“But they can pray, too,” I reminded him.
“If you all pray for it,” answered Dan, “then it will go, not to the fellow that knows most history, but to the fellow that's prayed the hardest. That isn't old Florret's idea, I'm sure.”
“But we are told to pray for things we want,” I insisted.
“Beastly mean way of getting 'em,” retorted Dan. And no argument that came to me, neither then nor at any future time, brought him to right thinking on this point.
He would judge all matters for himself. In his opinion Achilles was a coward, not a hero.
“He ought to have told the Trojans that they couldn't hurt any part of him except his heel, and let them have a shot at that,” he argued; “King Arthur and all the rest of them with their magic swords, it wasn't playing the game. There's no pluck in fighting if you know you're bound to win. Beastly cads, I call them all.”