"My dear Tom," said McNab, tearfully breaking the news, "it's too far—entirely too far away. You can't reach it, Tom; believe me, as man to man—you can't, you can never, never hit it."
"I know I can't, Dopey," said Kelly, in an equally mournful tone, "I know all that. All that you say is true. But, Dopey, suppose I should hit it, suppose I should, just think—think—how my name would go reeling and rocking down to fushure generations! Biff!"
They left McNab overcome by the impressiveness of this argument, busily gathering up the pool-balls, resolved that every opportunity should be given Kelly to rank among the immortals.
Stover would have liked to stay. For the moment, almost a rebellion swept over him at the drudgery to which he had condemned himself in his ambition. He saw again the low table, through the smoke, and Buck Waters's jovial pagan face leading the crowd in lazy, care-free abandon. He felt that liberty, that zest of life, that wild spirit of youth for which he yearned and of which he had been defrauded by Le Baron's hand, that hand which had ruthlessly torn away the veil. Something leaped up within him—a longing to break the harness, to jump the gate and go heels in the air, cavorting across unfenced meadows. He rebelled against the way that had been marked out for him. He rebelled against the self-imposed discipline, and, most of all, he rebelled against the hundred eyes under whose inspection he must now inevitably walk.
Ahead of them to the left, across by Osborne, came the gay, defiant singing of a group of upper classmen returning to the campus:
"For it's always fair weather
When good fellows stand together,
With a stein on the table
And a good song ringing clear."