“Great Scott, don’t be so modest!” laughed Gerald. “Why not? You are respectable, aren’t you? Well, think it over and——”
“But I don’t need to think it over! I’d—I’d like to do it very much if you are sure you really want me to.”
“Good! That’s fine! To-morrow we’ll go and see the Office. I don’t believe Forisher will mind if we double up, considering that we are each alone. Anyway, we’ll see. Good-night, Burtis. Sorry you’ve had so much interruption. All my fault, I fear. See you to-morrow.”
[CHAPTER III]
COTTON TRIES FOOTBALL
Kendall emerged from the doorway of Whitson Hall and stood for a minute at the top of the flight of worn granite steps. It was a warm, lazy day in the last week of September, a day that promised to become even warmer and lazier as it progressed. Just now the time was only a little after half-past eight, and breakfast was just over. The first recitation hour was at nine and in front of the buildings fellows were loitering in the sunlight. Here on the steps of Whitson at least a dozen were holding forth: Girard, who played center on the football team; Jensen, another pigskin follower; Davis, the manager, who was somewhat handicapped with the given name of Percival, which had been mercifully shortened and amended to “Perky”; Perry Whitehall, the dignified editor-in-chief of the school weekly, The Scholiast; and others whom Kendall knew only by sight. Many looked up as he came out and nodded or spoke to him. Doubtless any one of the three or four groups sitting or standing about the steps would have been pleased had he joined them, for Kendall had been a school hero in a small way ever since when, nearly a year ago now, he had won the Broadwood game by a kick from placement in the last two minutes of play. But Kendall was still rather shy, still very modest in his estimate of his own merits, and would rather have taken a licking than intrude where he wasn’t wanted.
He had been rooming with Gerald Pennimore in 28 Clarke for four days now and was still wondering about it. Why Gerald, who was perhaps the richest boy in school—there was a Fourth Class fellow named Hodgkins who had just entered and whose father, a railway magnate, was popularly credited with the possession of more wealth than Mr. John T. Pennimore, the Steamship King—why Gerald, wealthy and popular, had selected him, who was anything but wealthy and whose circle of friends included possibly not more than a dozen or so, for a roommate was a puzzle. The only likely explanation, Kendall decided, was that Gerald had done it out of pure kindness of heart. Whatever the reason, however, Kendall was intensely grateful. It was fine to have such a fellow as Gerald Pennimore for a friend, fine to share such a comfortable, even luxurious room as Number 28, fine to get away from his former roommate, Harold Towne, a chap with whom anyone with less patience and good nature than Kendall could never have put up.
But there was something else that Kendall was yet more grateful for, and as he stood there at the top of the steps and let his gaze wander over the scene before him, he realized it anew. He was very grateful to his father, who, by more than one sacrifice, had found the money for Kendall’s second year at Yardley. There had been a time during the summer when the boy’s chances of returning to school had looked pretty slim. It had been a bad summer for potatoes, and up in Aroostook County, Maine, where the Burtis farm was, a failure of the potato crop spelled trouble. It had been not until almost a fortnight before the commencement of the Fall Term that Kendall had been quite certain of returning to Yardley, and he very well knew that back home more than one comfort would be dispensed with the coming Winter that he might keep on with his education. And he had made up his mind that none of the money spent on him should be wasted. He meant to study hard and learn all he could this year, for it might be his last. He had resolved to win a scholarship if hard work would do it. There was the Gordon Scholarship which rebated the entire tuition fee, or, failing that, there remained four Sidney Scholarships of eighty dollars. One of the five Kendall meant to win.
From where he stood, Long Island Sound, blue and still, stretched east and west, visible over the tops of the trees which ran for nearly a half-mile between the school grounds and the shore. The buildings circled about the edge of a plateau down which a well-kept roadway dropped to the meadow lands below and wound westward to the little village of Wissining, to the river beyond, and, finally, to the small city of Greenburg beyond that. The river flowed down from behind the school property, a placid tidal stream which in fair weather was usually alive with boats and canoes. There were six school buildings, four of them, Clarke, Whitson, Dudley and Merle, dormitories, one of them, Oxford, given over to recitation rooms, library, assembly hall, the Office, the Principal’s living quarters and the rooms of the two school societies, Cambridge and Oxford. Beyond Merle Hall, the dormitory for the Preparatory Class boys, was the Kingdon Gymnasium, completing the line. Between the gymnasium and the river lay the athletic grounds. Here were the tennis courts, the baseball and football fields, the hockey rink in winter, the quarter-mile cinder track and the boathouse and floats. The golf links began nearby and wandered away along the curving stream, uphill and down.