“Of course! There’s no sense rushing through things too much, Bates. If you’d gone into the Fourth you’d have been through just when you were beginning to like the school. You will like it, I’m sure.”
“I expect to. I had a brother here five or six years ago, and he’s always cracked it up high.”
“That so?” Gard pulled the blue cushion from the box and tossed it across the room. “Put that behind you. Guess I’ll leave the rest of this truck until after supper.” He seated himself in one of the easy chairs and stretched a pair of rather long legs across the carpet. “Let’s get acquainted,” he added, smiling.
Dick liked that smile and answered it. But for a moment neither followed the suggestion. Gard was looking critically at the pictures he had hung, and Dick had a good chance to size him up. His room-mate was a bit taller than Dick, with rather a loose-jointed way of moving. He didn’t look exactly thin, but there certainly wasn’t any excess flesh about him. The running shoes suggested that he was a track athlete, and Dick surmised that he was a good one. You couldn’t call Gard handsome; perhaps he wasn’t even good-looking in the general acceptance of the word; but Dick liked his face none the less. The forehead was high and the lightish hair of a rather indeterminate shade of brown was brushed straight back from it. That happened to be a style of wearing the hair that Dick had always objected to, but he had to own that the fashion suited Gard very well. It emphasised the lean length of the face and added to the sharp, hawk-like appearance produced by a curved beak of a nose, thin and pointed, and the narrow jaws. But if Gard reminded Dick of a hawk, it was a gentle and kindly one, for the mouth was good-natured and the eyes, darkly grey, were soft and honest. Gard wore good clothes with no suggestion of extravagance. In age he was fully seventeen, perhaps a year more. He moved his gaze from the wall and it met Dick’s. Involuntarily both boys smiled. Then each began to speak at once, stopped simultaneously and laughed.
“You say it,” said Gard.
“I was going to ask if you were a runner.”
“I’m a hurdler. I’ve tried the sprints, but I’m only as good as a dozen others. Sometimes I ‘double’ in the broad-jump if we need the points. You look as if you might be fast on the track, Bates. By the way, what’s the rest of your name?”
“Richard C. The C’s for Corliss.”
“That means Dick, doesn’t it?”