"I'm going West this spring."
"Oh, are you?" said Roderick, glad to hear him say something. "You're lucky. That's where I'd like to be going."
"Yes, likely," sneered the other. "I guess any fellow can see what direction you're going all right."
"What do you mean?" asked Roderick, nettled at the tone.
"Oh, yes, as if you didn't know," growled his aggrieved rival. "You don't need to think I'm blind and deaf too, and a fool into the bargain."
Roderick stopped short in the middle of the snowy side-walk. "Look here," he said quietly, "if you don't speak up like a man, and tell me what you're hinting at I—well, I'll have to make you, that's all."
Fred had run foul of Roderick McRae at school and knew from painful experience that it was not safe to make him very angry.
"Well, you needn't get so hot about it," he said half apologetically. "I merely hinted that you—well, you can't help seeing it yourself—"
"Seeing what, you blockhead?"
"Seeing that she—that Leslie doesn't care two pins about anybody but you. She'd be glad if I went West to-morrow." The hot blood rushed into Roderick's face. He turned upon the young man, but they were passing under an electric light and the look of misery in Fred's face disarmed him. He burst into derisive laughter.