Undoubtedly hazing, as Linton, the Junior, said, was a good thing for his system, as it is for any young man, but Young certainly did not need such severe doses nor so many of them.
Some of the fellows said so the third time he was taken to the canal. "The old Deacon is all right now," they said; "why d'you give it to him so hard?"
But Channing was one of these small men that love to get power over big men; he loved to haze and he hated to have anyone call him little or mouthy, and Young had called him both. The next night he and Ballard, who, as will be seen later, had much of the bully in him, would bring around a different crowd and Channing would take out his pipe, shake it at Young and say to the others, "Now this old jay Deacon is innocent and meek enough to look at, but he is atrociously fresh at bottom—isn't he, Bally, you old horse?"
Young said nothing and took his hazing cheerfully and patiently, hoping they would soon get tired of it.
"I suppose," he said to himself, as he hurried back to his room to work until past midnight, in order to make up for lost time. "I suppose I must be very fresh, or they would not keep it up so long. I did not know I was so fresh."
But he told himself that if he were only well liked by his own classmates as he had expected to be, he would not care what his enemies thought of him. That he had not sprung into popularity, he decided, was due to that painful occurrence at his first recitation. It made him flush to think of it even now.
It was on the morning after the rush and after the Sophomores had been turned out of his room. He went in to the Livy recitation for which he had prepared himself so thoroughly—he went over it four and a half times, you may remember—and took his seat, feeling strong and confident, and, "Mr. Young, please to translate," said the professor, before the class was hardly settled in its seats.
It was in a low voice. Young was in the back of the room. He was not dreaming of being called upon first anyway, and he wondered why the fellow next to him was nudging him with an elbow. Young turned and looked at him inquiringly.
"Get up," whispered the man.
"What for?" whispered Young.