“Yes,” agreed Nick. “He took hold of the upper middlers two years ago and they ran away with everything and even held the first team to no score once. Remember, Bert?”
“That was three years ago, though, because I was a junior then. That was some team, Nick, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. Remember how it beat Grammar School thirty-four to nothing, or something like that? And Grammar School made a big howl about it and wrote to the paper that we’d played a lot of first team fellows against them.”
“Has Mr. Smiley anything to do with athletics here?” asked Hugh. “He said something that——”
“Chairman of the Faculty Athletic Committee,” replied Nick. “He and Gring and Pete Sargent are the committee. You must have made a hit with him or he wouldn’t have gone to Dinny with you. I like Smiles. Wish I was still taking Latin.”
“I dare say it wouldn’t do you any harm,” said Bert unkindly.
“Nor much good. All a fellow needs is enough to pass his college exams. After that he forgets it as fast as he knows how. Well, meanwhile there’s a bunch of German waiting for me downstairs. You’re a lucky dog not to have the stuff, Bert.”
“I get it next year. What are you reading?”
“‘Das Edel Blüt.’ It’s tough, if you ask me. When there was a perfectly good, gentlemanly language like Latin, why did someone have to go and invent German? Well, I’m off.”
Hugh was summoned to the office Thursday and listened to a brief homily by Mr. Rumford. When he emerged he was once more in good standing. Since, however, it was by that time almost five o’clock, it was too late to report to Mr. Crowley that day, and Hugh dropped in on Wallace Cathcart and spent the rest of the time until supper arguing whether a college education was essential to success in life. While Hugh could beat his host at tennis, and had done it twice since their first meeting, he was no match for him in the present controversy, and Cathcart won the debate easily, proving conclusively that a high school education was all that was required by the average person. And this in the face of the fact that Cathcart had his plans all laid for a full college course and two years of graduate study!