Dobbins had decorated the top of his chiffonier with two photographs and Myron examined them. One was a group picture of four persons; a woman rather thin and angular but with a kind and sweet face, a girl of some fourteen years, awkward and staring, and two younger girls, the littlest perhaps six. All were dressed in their finest and all, at least to Myron’s sophisticated sight, were dowdy. He concluded that the persons were Dobbins’ mother and sisters. The second photograph was a more ambitious affair and showed a man of about forty years. He had a square, much seamed face from which two keen eyes looked straight at the beholder. A funny little patch of beard adorned the chin and above it a wide mouth was drawn severely down at the corners. In the photograph the man looked stern and hard and even cross, Myron thought, but there was something nice about the countenance in spite of that, something suggesting that behind the weathered face were clean thoughts and kindliness.
“That’s the Spruce Gum King,” he reflected. “I guess if he hadn’t been scared at the camera he’d have looked rather a fine old chap, in spite of the little bunch of whiskers. He looks something like Dobbins, too: same sort of eyes and—and same expression about the chin. Only Dobbins is more lazy and good-natured, I guess.”
Later, his trunks came—there were two of them—and he had the expressman set them behind the door, one atop the other. There was no sense in opening them, for his kit-bag provided all he needed for the night. By that time it was nearing the supper hour and there was a rustling in the leaves of the lindens and the air was cooler. He told himself that whether Dobbins ever returned was nothing to him, and yet he found himself listening for the other’s heavy tread in the corridor. He wondered where Dobbins had gone, and rather resented his absence. The magazine which he had been reading beside the open window ceased to hold his attention and he glanced at his watch. A quarter to six. The supper hour was six o’clock. He had looked that up in his copy of the school catalogue. And you ate in Alumni Hall, which, as the plan of the school showed, was the building on the extreme left of the line. Finally Myron stripped to his waist and had a good splurge with soap and water. Some kindly soul had supplied a towel and it wasn’t until he was through using it that he saw the inscription “Dobbins” on one end.
“Well, how was I to know?” he grumbled. “Maybe I’d better dig into the trunk and get out a few of my own.”
But after supper would do, and just now he was feeling decidedly hungry, and washing up had refreshed him and made life look more pleasant. He hoped there would be something fit to eat, but he didn’t expect it. He was getting back into his clothes when the approach of his temporary room-mate was announced from some distance down the hall by the clump-clump of heavy shoes. Dobbins was peculiarly ungentle with doors. He flung them open and didn’t care what happened to them afterwards. In the present case the door crashed back against the trunks behind it with a most annoying bang, but Dobbins didn’t appear to have heard it. He was strangely attired, was Dobbins, and Myron, one arm in his shirt, gazed in astonishment and for a moment forgot to go on with his dressing.
A faded yellowish-brown jersey with half of the left sleeve missing and the other torn and mended—and torn and not mended—was surmounted by a canvas football jacket held together down the front with a black shoe-lace and a piece of twine. The jacket was so old and stained that Myron could easily believe it an heirloom, something handed down through generations of football-playing Dobbinses! A pair of rather new khaki pants, woollen stockings of brown twice ringed with light blue that well matched the jersey in condition, and scuffed and scarred football shoes completed the costume. Dobbins’ hair was every which way and there was more or less dirt on his broad countenance through which the perspiration had flowed in little rivulets with interesting results.
“Hello, kiddo!” Dobbins greeted jovially. “How’s the grouch coming on? Say, they’ve got a swell gridiron here; two or three of ’em, in fact. Wonderful turf. It’s a pleasure to fall on it, honest! Hear from your old man yet?”
“Hardly,” replied Myron drily. “What have you been doing?”
“Me? Sweating, son, mostly. Practising football some, too.”
“Oh! I didn’t know you played.”