“But you know how most fellows estimate a chap,” Ben went on hastily; “they judge by outward appearances.”
“Evidently my appearance is decidedly against me,” laughed Rod.
Involuntarily the visitor lifted a hand to one of his ears, half of which had been cut away cleanly at some time by a sharp instrument. He could not have been called a prepossessing or attractive lad, but there was a certain rugged honesty and frankness in his eyes and his manner which stamped him as the right sort. Nevertheless, during the first weeks of his life in Oakdale, being misunderstood and misjudged by nearly every one, he had passed through a cloudy and bitter experience.
“It’s not wholly by a fellow’s looks that he’s estimated, Rod; actions count, you know. I came here an unknown, just as you did; but you have the advantage of me, for you’re a good-looking chap, and I’m simply ugly. Now if you’d happened to hit the fellows just right at first, and you’d deported yourself according to their views regarding the code of behavior for an Oakdale Academy man, you might have become popular at once.”
Rod snapped his fingers, rising to fling a leg over one corner of the table, on which he half seated himself, the other foot upon the floor, leaning forward toward Ben.
“Who are these narrow-minded, Puritanical, half-baked New England cubs that allow they have a right to lay out a code of deportment and behavior to be followed by me?” he cried scornfully. “It was chance that corraled me in this wretched hole, not choice. What do these fellows here really know about me, anyway? Nothing. Disgusted with their nosey, prying ways, I’ve amused myself by stringing them—by telling preposterous tales of my wild adventures and hairbreadth escapes. Evidently it hasn’t helped my cause much, for the blockheads seem to lack imagination and a real sense of humor. Why, they really thought I was trying to make them believe those yarns, while all the time it was apparent on the surface to any one with the slightest horse sense that I was joshing. They think me a braggart. Bah!”
Ben twisted uneasily upon his chair. “They don’t understand you, Rod, any more than they understood me at first,” he said soothingly. “Now I’m willing to take your word for it that you had some good reason for refusing to play football—even for swallowing the slurs and insults of Hunk Rollins and Berlin Barker.”
The eyes of the young Texan flashed and a flush deepened in his bronzed cheeks.
“Rollins is a cheap bully,” he declared, “and it seems to me Barker showed himself up for a coward when he ran away from Oakdale with the idea in his head that he had been chiefly concerned in driving me dotty.”
“Your estimation of Rollins is pretty near correct,” nodded Ben, remembering his own experience with the same fellow; “and if you had come out boldly and faced Barker when he returned from Clearport I’m sure the situation would be different to-day.”