"Schley is an odious little toad," said Stover evasively. A little vain of his new knowledge and the destiny before him, he looked at the budding McCarthy with somewhat the anxiety of a mother hen, and said with great solemnity: "Don't go off half cock, old fellow."
"What! Have you fallen for the bugaboo?"
"My dear Tough," said Stover, with a little gorgeousness, "don't commit yourself until you know the whole business. You like the feeling here, don't you—the way every one is out working for something?"
"You bet I do."
"Well, it's the society system that does it."
"Come off."
"Wait and see."
"But what in the name of my aunt's cat's pants," said McCarthy, unwilling to relinquish the red rag, "what in the name of common sense is the holy sacred secret, that it can't be looked at, talked about, or touched?"
"Don't be a galoot, Tough," said Stover, in a superior way; "don't be a frantic ass. All that's exaggerated; only little jack-asses like Schley are frightened by it. The real side, the serious side, is that the system is built up for the fellows who are going to do something for Yale. Now, just wait until you get your eyes open before you go shooting up the place."
But, as he stood in his own bedroom, with no Tough McCarthy to instruct and patronize, alone at his window, looking out at the sputtering arc lights with their splotchy regions of light and the busy windows of Pierson Hall across the way, listening to the chapel sending forth its quarter hour over the half-divined campus—he was not quite so confident of all he had proclaimed.