"It's about something important," he said in an undertone as they passed between the Bulletin Elm and Old Chapel, where the crowd was always thickest. More than one Freshman, looking on, wished he could be on such familiar footing with Young. There were others who wished they could be thus sought out by Powelton.
It was right here, Young remembered, Powelton put this same arm in the same way about Lee that day he first heard about the proclamations. Powelton ignored Young that day. But that was before the Ballard episode.
"Deacon," said Powelton, when they had reached the latter's room—everyone called him "Deacon" now, and he liked it—"a crowd of us fellows are getting up a new eating-club, so we can all be together; at present, you know, the gang is scattered all over town. We thought we'd go some place where we could have an extra room to loaf and read the papers in, like the upper-classmen clubs, besides getting better grub, even if we have to pay a little more for it. There'll be Lucky, of course, and Stevie and Todd—Polk would come, only he has been taken to the 'Varsity training table" (that was the football man who was next to Young in the rush), "and White, and, well the whole gang of us, you know, and we want you to join us. It's the best crowd in the class, all right enough, even if I do say it myself."
"Much obliged for asking me," Young interrupted, "but I can't afford it."
A few weeks ago Young would have given some other excuse, or would have blushed and hemmed and hawed before he got out this one. And a few weeks before, the other Freshman might not have known how to reply to it: but they had both gained some new ideas since they came to college, and also had lost some old ones, which is equally important.
"Lucky told me you were hard up this year," Powelton said, as if he were often equally hard up himself. "As I was going on to ask, what would you say to managing the club—would you mind the bother? Then it wouldn't cost you a cent. It wouldn't be much bother. Somebody's got to run it, and we want somebody that's congenial. Come on, won't you?"
"Well, Minerva," said Young, finally, "I'll think about it and tell you."
"That's right. Think it over. You've got a week to make up your mind in. So long."
"Thank you for asking me. Good-by."
Young had no objections to managing a club; that was not the reason he hesitated. It was because he did not agree with Powelton that the fellows named were the best crowd in the class. In fact, he did not approve of most of them, and some of them seemed not to realize what they had been sent to college for.