"Don't go away with your back up, Jack," Linton shouted after him good-naturedly. "And you need not worry about little Stacy. The best time he ever had in college was with us snobs here to-night, and he's probably chuckling to himself now on his way across the campus about the big tear he made."
But little Stacy was not doing anything of the sort. One of his new Blucher shoes had come untied when he had jumped up on the chair to do the president act, and he stopped to tie it by the light of the club window. And it was wide open.
THE HAZING OF VALLIANT
This story begins with a girl. She was small and had a nose that turned up and a quiet appreciation of the ridiculous. All summer long she sat on the sand without a veil and was nice to two little boys in clean duck trousers and buzz-saw hats which blew off sometimes.
One of these was eighteen years old and had a complexion that women envied and felt like kissing. He was small and dainty and smelt like good soap. His name was Valliant. The other was a little older, considerably bigger, and much more self-assertive. Except for his duck trousers he wore orange and black with his class numerals on everything. That might have made but little difference. But the girl decided that she would like it more if they would become angry for her sake, which they one day did.
After that whenever the little one was alone with her his voice was soft and his manner thoroughly abject. She liked this. She liked his sweet-and-cleanness also. The other, whose name was Buckley, had an untamed, defiant way of tossing his shoulders, like an unbroken stallion. She liked that still more. When she sat out dances with him, she put him where the arc-light on the veranda would play upon his eyes, which were good, and talked about the other boy's nice manners.
Best of all she liked to have both about her at once. The sophomore breathed lungfuls of cigarette smoke and told her how hard his class would haze the freshman in the fall, and how cold the canal was on a frosty night, while the sub-freshman only gazed out over the legs and arms splashing and gleaming in the surf, and tried to smile in a way to show Buckley that he was not taking offence. For what could a sub-freshman do?
Then the girl would poke the end of her red parasol in the sand and say: "I think it would be just too mean of you to haze Mr. Valliant. He is such a good friend of mine." This was because it is woman's nature to take the part of the weak and oppressed.
But one day the sophomore made a remark about "pretty pink-cheeked boys," which had been better left unsaid. Then arose the younger one and shaking impressively a slender, pink-nailed finger, he spoke. "You had better not try to haze me, Will Buckley. Do you hear what I say?" Which was the very worst thing he could have said. Besides it was decidedly fresh.
But he was very much in earnest and quite angry and his young voice broke in the middle. The sophomore laughed mirthfully and the girl became genuinely sorry for a moment, despite the humor of the situation; and as she watched his dainty legs retreating over the dunes toward the cottages it repented her of having stirred up enmity between the two, and she resolved from that day to make up for it. This she did by being always good to the little one in the presence of the big one, which seems short-sighted in her.