“Oh, yes,” replied Myron confidently.
“Good. Now pull your chair over here, please, and we’ll see what the job is.”
Merriman had a lean face from which two dark brown eyes looked keenly forth. His mouth was broad and his nose straight and long. A high forehead, a deep upper lip and a firmly pointed chin added to the general effect of length. You couldn’t have called him handsome, by any stretch of the imagination, but there was something attractive in his homeliness. Perhaps it was the expression of the eyes or perhaps the smile that hovered continuously about the wide mouth. He dressed, Myron reflected, as wretchedly as Joe Dobbins: more wretchedly, in fact, for Joe’s clothes were at least new and good of their kind, whereas Merriman’s things were old, frayed, ill-fitting. His trousers, which bagged so at the knees that they made Merriman look crooked, had been a positive shock to the visitor. But in spite of attire and surroundings, Myron liked this new acquaintance. Above all, he liked his voice. It was deep without being gruff and had a kind of—of pleasant kindliness in it, he thought. After all, it was no fault to be poor if you couldn’t help it, he supposed; and he had known fellows back home—not intimately, of course, but well enough to talk to—who, while poor, were really splendid chaps.
Presently Merriman finished his questions and finished jotting down little lines and twirls and pot-hooks on a scrap of paper. Myron rather wished he knew shorthand too. It looked ridiculously easy the way Merriman did it. “All right, thanks,” said the latter as he laid his pencil down. “I think I know what we’ve got ahead of us. Frankly, I don’t see how they let you into the third with so little Latin, Foster. But we’ll correct that. How are you at learning, by the way? Does it come easy or do you have to grind hard?”
“Why, I think I learn things fairly easily,” replied Myron doubtfully. “Of course, Latin looks hard to me because I’ve never had much of it, but I think—I hope you won’t find me too stupid.” Afterwards, recalling the visit, it struck him as odd that he should have said that. Usually he didn’t trouble greatly about whether folks found him one way or another. He was Myron Foster, take him or leave him!
“I shan’t,” answered Merriman. “I’ve had all sorts and I always manage to get results.”
“Do you do much tutoring?” Myron asked.
“A good deal. Not so much now as later. Spring’s my busy time.”
“I shouldn’t think you’d have time for your own studies.”
“I’m not taking much this year. Only four courses. I could have finished last spring, but I wasn’t quite ready for college then. By the way, if you hear of any one wanting a nice puppy I wish you’d send them to me. I can’t keep all that litter and I’d hate to kill the poor little tykes.”