“I’ll wake you up before the dear old lady gets a chance to box your ears,” promised his room-mate with a laugh. And then our hero crawled into bed to spend his first night as a real Yale student.
Joe thought he had never seen so perfect a day as the one to which the alarm clock awakened him some hours later. It was clear and crisp, and on the way to chapel with the others of the Red Shack, he breathed deep of the invigorating air. The exercises were no novelty to him, but it was very different from those at Excelsior Hall, and later the campus seemed to be fairly alive with the students. But Joe no longer felt alone. He had a chum—several of them, in fact, for the acquaintances of the night before seemed even closer in the morning.
The duties of the day were soon over, lectures not yet being under way. Joe got his name down, learned when he was expected to report, the hours of recitation, and other details. His new chums did the same.
“And now let’s see about that eating club,” proposed Ricky Hanover, when they were free for the rest of the day. “It’s all right to go to Glory’s once in a while—especially at night when the jolly crowd is there, and a restaurant isn’t bad for a change—but we’re not here for a week or a month, and we want some place that’s a bit like home.”
The others agreed with him, and a little investigation disclosed an eating resort run by a Junior who was working his way through Yale. It was a quiet sort of a place, on a quiet street, not so far away from the Red Shack as to make it inconvenient to go around for breakfast. The patrons of it, besides Joe and his new friends, were mostly Freshmen, though a few Juniors, acquaintances of Roslyn Joyce, who was trying to pay his way to an education by means of it, ate there, as did a couple of very studious Seniors, who did not go in for the society or sporting life.
“This’ll be just the thing for us,” declared Joe; and the others agreed with him.
There was some talk of football in the air. All about them students were discussing the chances of the eleven, especially in the big games with Harvard and Princeton, and all agreed that, with the new material available, Yale was a sure winner.
“What are you going in for?” asked Joe of Ricky, as the five of them—Joe, Ricky, Spike, Slim Jones and Hank Heller strolled across the campus.
“The eleven for mine—if I can make it!” declared Ricky. “What’s yours, Joe?”
“Baseball. But it’s a long while off.”