“That’s what I like,” said Hugh eagerly. “I think your way of not taking things seriously is awfully jolly. It isn’t that you really don’t—don’t know that they’re serious—when they are—but you simply don’t take them so. As I say, I’ve never been to an English school, but I’m sure you fellows over here get a lot more fun than we do on the other side. Just at first some of the fun seemed to me to be rather—I say, I hope you won’t mind it, old chap, but it seemed a bit silly, if you know what I mean.”
“I think a lot of our fun is,” replied Cathcart, “but it’s generally fairly harmless. Of course, the other night was different, but that was exceptional here. We aren’t in the habit of blacking each other’s eyes, you see.”
“But I liked that! That was—was so jolly spontaneous, eh? Some of the fun seems a bit—well, a bit studied, but that wasn’t. A lot of chaps have been awfully apologetic about that affair, and I don’t see why. On the other side we’d have thought nothing about it, and the masters wouldn’t have noticed it, I fancy. But we’re a bit more used to using our fists than you chaps, I think. I say, though, here I am talking like ‘a bloomin’ Britisher,’ as Nick says, when I’m really just as much American as I am English.”
“Are you really? That explains it, then. There’s something about you that doesn’t seem entirely English, Ordway. You don’t look terribly English, for one thing.”
“My mother is American,” said Hugh. “Her family has lived in Maryland ever since the place was settled, I fancy. I’ve been over here off and on, you know, ever since I was a kid. It’s queer, Cathcart, but sometimes I feel as if I was all American and sometimes as if I was all English! Queer game, eh?”
“Jekyll and Hyde idea?” asked the other, with a smile. “But don’t ask me which is Jekyll!”
“I won’t,” laughed Hugh. “Don’t want to embarrass you. What’s that stuff you’re digging at?”
“Benson’s ‘Medieval History,’” replied Cathcart. “It’s very interesting.”
“But, I say, we don’t have that, do we?”
“No, I’m just taking it up as a reading course. I have a good deal of spare time this term and next, you see.”