Not all the Whitson rooms were desirable, however. On the third floor, for instance, was one that Toby, when he looked about the comparative grandeur of Number 12, remembered without regrets. He had passed last year under its sloping roof in an atmosphere of benzine and cooking. The benzine odor was due to the fact that he had conducted a fairly remunerative business in cleaning and pressing clothes, the smell of cooking to the fact that the room’s one window was directly above the basement kitchen. This year the atmosphere promised to be sweeter, for Number 12 was on the front of the building, away from the kitchen, and Toby had retired from business.
There were moments when he viewed his retirement with alarm, for, although his father had assured him that sufficient money would be forthcoming to meet expenses if Toby managed carefully, he couldn’t quite forget that, should anything interrupt the prosperity of the boat-building business at home, there would be nothing to fall back on. But Arnold had made the abandoning of the cleaning and pressing industry a condition of his invitation to a share of Number 12. “Homer’s not coming back, Toby,” he had announced in August. (Homer Wilkins had been Arnold’s roommate the preceding year.) “I wish you’d come down to Number 12 with me. It won’t cost you much more than that cell up in Poverty Row; and that’s an awful dive, anyway. Of course, you can’t go on with that beastly, smelly clothes-cleaning stunt, but you weren’t going to anyway, were you? I mean, since your father’s business has picked up so this spring and summer you won’t have to, eh?”
Frankly, Toby had fully intended to. Being even partly self-supporting gives one a feeling of independence that one hates to lose. But Toby said nothing of that. He thought it over and, because he was very fond of Arnold, as Arnold was of him, and because Number 22 had been pretty bad at times, he yielded. This evening he was very glad that he had, as, pausing with a crumpled pair of trousers in his hand midway between his battered trunk and his closet, he viewed again the quiet comfort of the big square room. Wilkins had removed a few things, but they were not missed, and Arnold’s folks were sending down another chair and a small bookcase from New York for Toby’s use. A fellow ought, he reflected, to be very happy in such a place; and he felt renewed gratitude to Arnold for choosing him to share its comforts. Arnold might easily have picked one of several fellows as a roommate without surprising Toby: Frank, for instance. Arnold had known Frank longer than he had known Toby. Reflecting in such fashion, Toby remained immovable so long that Arnold, who had for the moment abandoned more important business to put together a new loose-leaf notebook under the mellow glow of the droplight on the big table, looked across curiously.
“What’s your difficulty, T. Tucker?” he asked. “Gone to sleep on your feet? Reaction, I suppose, after the near-trainwreck!”
“I was just thinking,” answered Toby slowly, “that this is an awfully jolly room and that it was mighty good of you to let me come in with you.”
“Well, the room’s all right. (How in the dickens does this thing catch?) I like it a heap better than those mission-furnished rooms in Clarke. Of course, next year I suppose I’ll try for Dudley, with the rest of the First Class fellows, although I don’t know about that, either. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll stick here. It’s getting a whole lot like home, Toby. But as for its being good for me to have you with me here, why, that’s sort of funny, T. Tucker. Guess you’re not the only one that’s—er—that’s benefited, what? Rather like it myself, if you must know. Homer and I got on pretty well, all things considered, but that was mainly because he’s too lazy to quarrel with you about anything. Personally, Toby, I like a row now and then. It sort of—clears the atmosphere, so to speak. That’s why I thought of you. You’ve got such a perfectly beastly disposition and such a rotten temper that I can have a scrap whenever I feel the need of it. So, you see, it was pure selfishness, after all, old thing.”
Toby smiled and went over to the closet with his burden. “We started with a scrap, anyway,” he said. “Remember it, Arn?”
“Perfectly. I intimated that your hair was sort of reddish and you didn’t like it. So you came at me like a cyclone and we both went into the harbor. I remember it perfectly. It started because you wanted twenty-four cents a gallon for some gasoline.”
“Twenty-two. You said you paid only twenty in New York.”
“Anyway, I offered you less than you asked, and you said you’d pump it out of the tank again, and——”