"You damned unemotional cuss," said Stover, looking at him a little defiantly.
"Are you coming with me this summer to see a little real life—get a little real education?" said Regan irrelevantly.
"If you'll take me."
"Good boy."
He rested his hand on Stover's shoulder a moment, and gave him a little tap, and the touch brought a genuine thrill of happiness to Dink.
"Lord, what a leader he'd make," he thought. "Why is it, and what's the story the old rhinoceros can't tell, I wonder?"
The old crowd was at Brocky's, the crowd which had first stirred his imagination. His return produced quite a sensation. Nothing was said, but the grip in the handshakes was different, and the diffident, hesitant little expressions of relieved good-will that came to him touched him more than he would have believed.
Brockhurst began to expound his scheme, speaking nervously, in compressed sentences, as he always did in the beginning of an argument.
"Here's what I'm trying to say. We've all been sitting round and criticizing—I mean I have—things up here. Now why not really suggest something—worth while?" He frowned, and becoming angry at his own difficulty in expressing himself, gradually became more fluent. "We all feel the need of getting together and having real discussions, and we all agree that debating here has died out, become merely perfunctory. The debates take place in a class-room, and everything is cold, stiff, mechanical. Now that all is unnecessary. What we want is something spontaneous, informal and with the incentive of a contest. This is my scheme. To take a certain number—say twenty—of the men in the class who really have ideas, and believe in expressing them; form a club to meet one night a week in some room over a restaurant where we can sit about tables, smoke, have beer and lemonade, a bit to eat if you want, everything natural, informal. Divide the club up equally into two camps, each camp to have a leader for each debate, who opens the discussion and sums it up—the only formal, perfunctory speeches. Every one else speaks as he feels like it, right from his table. Have in an outside judge, and keep a record. At the end of the year the side that loses sets the other up to a banquet."