His thoughts went back to the afternoon when Jim Todd had first edged into view and to Mart’s almost impassioned utterances just previous thereto. Clem smiled. Mart had been hankering for new types and then Jim had walked in quite as if he had been awaiting his cue off-stage! Clem’s smile, though, was caused by the recollection that Mart hadn’t been nearly so enthusiastic about “new blood” in the concrete—meaning Jim Todd—as he had been in “new blood” in the abstract! Mart had tolerated Jim, but had never derived much pleasure from the acquaintanceship. Old Mart was a heap more conservative than he had thought himself!
Then, thinking of Mart, Clem remembered how perfectly corking Jim had been during Mart’s illness. If he hadn’t done a great deal to help it was only because there had been so little he could do. He had always been ready, always eager, always sympathetic. Yes, and there were those two days when poor old Mart had been so beastly sick, and Clem had worried himself miserable, or would have if Jim hadn’t sort of stuck around and kept telling him that folks could be awfully ill with typhoid and yet pull out all hunky; that he’d seen it more’n once. Why, come to think of it, there had been three or four days when Jim had been with him half the time! How had he done it? He must have missed class more than once, and as for studying—well, he just couldn’t have studied!
Clem got up very suddenly, stuffed Jim’s letter in a pocket of his white flannels and stared savagely at an inoffensive palm in a gray stone jar. But though he looked at the palm he didn’t seem to be addressing it when he spoke, for what he said was: “Clem, you’re a low-lived yellow pup! Get it?”
[CHAPTER V]
A NEW TERM BEGINS
Clem returned to school the day before the beginning of the Fall term to find Alton looking sun-smitten and feeling exceedingly hot. The air, after the fresh, sweet breezes of the Berkshires, seemed stale and stifling, although when the cab had borne him past the business section of the town and residences surrounded by lawns and gardens and shaded by trees had taken the place of brick blocks there was a perceptible change for the better. It had been a dry summer and the campus showed it as Clem was hurried up Meadow street. The trees looked droopy and the grass parched. The buildings lined across the brow of the campus had a deserted appearance, with only here and there a window open to the faint stir of air. He almost wished he had waited until to-morrow.
The cab swerved to the right, proceeded a short distance along the gravel and stopped with a sudden setting of squeaking brakes in front of the first building. Clem helped the driver upstairs with the trunk, their feet echoing hollowly in the empty corridors. Number 15 was hot and close, and Clem sent the two windows banging up even before he paid the cabman. When the latter had gone clattering down again Clem removed his jacket and looked speculatively about him. The old room looked sort of homelike, after all, he concluded. He was glad that Mart had decided to leave his furnishings and pictures for the present. Jim Todd’s possessions up in Number 29, as Clem recalled them, were few and more useful than ornamental! Of course, Clem could have spread his own pictures and things about a bit more, but they’d probably have looked sort of thin. He opened the door of Mart’s closet and the drawers of his chiffonier and sighed as he saw what a deal of truck there was to be packed. However, he had the rest of the afternoon and most of the morning for his task. He routed a packing-case of Mart’s from the basement store-room, tugged it up to the room and started to work.
At five o’clock he had made the disconcerting discovery that Mart’s clothing and books and small possessions, which had seemed to bulk so large before, wouldn’t fill the big box more than three-quarters full, and had thrown himself into a chair to consider the fact and cool off when footsteps sounded below the window and then came nearer up the stairs. Then a voice sounded.