“Grafton, not Grafter, if you please. Grafters is what the Greenies call us.”
“Who are the Greenies?”
“The Mount Morris fellows. Their color is green, you know.”
“Seems like it would be a good place for me,” chuckled Crail, transferring a large slice of roast beef to his plate and starting to work on it. (The others observed with interest as the meal progressed that their new acquaintance dealt with one thing at a time. He consumed his beef to the last portion before he paid any attention to the vegetables and then ate each vegetable by itself.) “Which comes first, Grafton or Greenbank?”
“Grafton, in everything,” laughed Dud. “We get to Needham Junction about half-past two. That’s where we change. You stay on and get to Greenbank about an hour later.”
“I didn’t know it took so long,” said Crail. “Tell me about your school, fellows. What’s it like? What do you do there? How many of you are there?”
“We had two hundred and sixteen last year,” replied Jimmy, “and I guess we’ll have a few more this year. I suppose the faculty would take more if we had dormitory room. We have three big dormitories and two small ones. Dud and I are in Lothrop this year. That’s the newest one, and it’s a peach. Then there’s Manning, where the younger fellows live, and Trow, the oldest one. And there’s Fuller and Morris, but they’re just wooden houses on the Green. They look after about twenty fellows altogether.”
“Don’t any of you live around?” asked Crail. “In the town, I mean?”
“No, the school’s about a half-mile from the town. Of course, we have some fellows who live in Grafton, you know, but not many.”
“I guess I’d rather live outside the school,” said Crail. “You don’t have to toe the mark so much, eh?”