Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey's part, but he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.
"Did you go to school together?" he said.
"Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him when I landed here—just bumped together, as it were."
"You don't say so?"
"Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek prose composition—cursed be the memory!—when I came out of Alumni Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight—looked like a chicken had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago—but spunky as you make 'em. Never had put a collar on his neck—I got him up to that last spring; but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he didn't know a soul. No more did I. So we said, 'Why not?' And we did. We hunted up these quarters, and we've got on first-rate ever since. No scratching, gouging, or biting. We've been a good team. I've seen the world, I've got hard sense, and he's got ideas—quite remarkable ideas. Danged if I'm not stuck on the little rooster."
Stover reached out for the tobacco to fill a second pipe, all his curiosity aroused.
"I say, Dink," said Swazey, offering him a match, "this college is a wonderful thing, isn't it?" He stood reflectively, the sputtering light of the match illuminating his thoughtful face. "Just think of the romance in it. Me and Pike coming together from two ends of the country and striking it up. That's what counts up here—the perfect democracy of it!"
"Yes, of course," said Stover in a mechanical way. He was wondering what Swazey would think of the society system, or if he even realized it existed, so he said curiously:
"You keep rather to yourselves, though."
"Oh, I know pretty much what I want to know about men. I've sized 'em up and know what sorts to reach out for when I want them. Now I want to learn something real." He looked at Stover with a sort of rugged superiority in his glance and said: "I've earned my own way ever since I was twelve years old, and some of it was pretty rough going. I know what's outside of this place and what I want to reach. That's what a lot of you fellows don't worry about just now."