Tommy shrugged, crossed his knees and regarded a chocolate disapprovingly. Beyond a doubt it had been confined too long in that box! “If you mean I’m not popular, you’re right. But popularity never got any one anything much. Look at History. Men who really did things, men who won success, were unpopular. Look at—at Cæsar, and Napoleon and Lincoln and—”
“Your examples are not so good, Tommy,” Bert laughed. “The gentlemen you refer to were rather unfortunate in the end, weren’t they?”
“What of it? They did big things while they were alive. If you’re one of these popular, well-liked guys about all you get is a slap on the back. When there’s a real plum to be handed out the popular guy takes tickets at the door. Every one likes him fine, but when there’s a big job to be done no one even sees him. The job goes to some rough-neck who has so many enemies he has to carry a gun! No, sir, being liked is a handicap, Bert. If you want to be something and get somewhere talk rude, step on folks’ toes and get yourself hated. It’s the surest way.”
“Tommy, you certainly get hold of some funny notions,” said Bert, half admiringly. “It must take a lot of your time to think them up.”
Tommy waved a hand carelessly. “I like to think,” he said. “Most fellows don’t. When you call my ideas funny, though, you just mean that they don’t happen to be yours. That’s typical of your class, Bert. Anything strange—I mean unfamiliar—you call funny.”
“My class? Meaning the Junior?”
“No, class in society.” Tommy rejected an unpromising piece of candy and searched farther. “Wealthy and conservative, you know. Hide-bound New England. All that sort of thing.”
“I’m New England, if you like,” agreed Bert, amused, “but I’m not exactly wealthy, and I do hope I’m not hide-bound. That doesn’t sound comfortable. Aren’t you New England yourself, you crazy coot?”
“No. I live there, but that’s all. We’re from Western New York originally. My father’s folks were Welsh and my mother’s Irish.”