"I don't care; I ain't going to be bullied and treated like a slave for anybody."
"What are you doing now?"
"Oh, I am in a shoe store, but I don't like it much. The college fellows hold their heads so high and look down on clerks as if they were no better than toads. I mean to make my father send me to school and to college. I know he can afford it as well as not if he chooses, and then, I shall be somebody."
"And then the Seniors will bully you, and you will have to mind the professors and tutors, and be on hand for prayers and recitations, and how will you like that?" asked Eben.
"I don't care; I mean to try it, anyway. But come; go with me and got some oysters and a glass of lager."
"No, thank you," said Eben again. "I have just had my dinner at the hotel."
"Whew!" whistled Tom, opening his eyes. "We are grand, to be sure! How did you come to do that?"
"Well, I went up to the college to carry a letter from Dr. Henry to Dr. Porter, and Dr. Porter showed me the museum, and then asked me to dinner with him. He lent me these books, too. I think he is a nice old gentleman."
"Nice! I should think he was. There is not a person in Hobartown more thought of—no, not the president himself. Well, to be sure, the luck that some people have! But did he really ask you to dinner, or are you fooling, now? You are just trying to make me believe a big one, I bet."
"Believe or not, as you like," said Eben, indignantly. "It's nothing to me."