“Loafers! Don’t call my friends names, please. They aren’t loafers. Every one of them has a steady, respectable job, Rowland.”
“Y-yes, when they work, but it seems to me they’re a lot like a fellow who used to live in my town. He sat in front of the grocery most all day, or, if it was Winter, he sat inside. He had a steady, respectable job, too, but he didn’t work at it much. He was a maker of wooden shoes.”
“Oh, piffle,” grunted Humphrey. “The fellows I know work just as hard as anyone.”
“All right, but they always seem to be able to get away for a game of pool,” answered Ira drily. “If you’ll cut loose from them, Nead, and get acquainted with fellows of your own age and—and class, you’ll be a lot better off. Why, thunderation, you might as well be a day scholar for all the school life you get!”
“I get all the school life I need,” answered Humphrey grumpily. “All those fellows like Lyons and Johnston and Goodloe talk about is football and baseball and rot like that. They make me tired.”
“No, they don’t, and you know it,” replied Ira calmly. “You’d be glad to know a dozen fellows like them. And you’re going to, too.”
“How am I?”
“Why, you’re going to cut down your evenings at the Central Billiard Palace, or whatever it’s called, to two a week, for one thing. And you’re going to keep away from there entirely in the daytime, for another thing. And you’re going to pay a few visits with me for a third thing.”
“Like fun I am!” But Humphrey couldn’t disguise the fact that the programme held attraction for him. “I don’t talk their sort of baby talk,” he added sourly.
“You’ll learn. It isn’t hard. We’ll run over tomorrow evening and see Johnston and Bradford.”