“Why—er—that’s all, I guess. I ordered two pairs of the funny things and came away.”
Clinton and Hazlett were still chuckling. “Chick” looked from them to Stowell doubtfully and began to wonder what ailed the latter’s sense of humor.
“Knitting!” murmured Clinton, “think of it!”
“Yes,” said Stowell, suddenly, “that’s awfully funny, ‘Chick.’ Funniest thing I’ve heard for a long while. Do you know—” the tone made his friend stare in surprise—“I think you’ve got one of the most delicate humorous perceptions I’ve ever met up with. You have, indeed. Only you, ‘Chick,’ could have seen all the exquisite humor in the situation you’ve described. You ought to be proud of yourself.”
Clinton and Hazlett had ceased their chuckles and were looking over at their host, their faces reflecting the surprise and uneasiness upon “Chick’s.”
“Here’s a poor duffer,” went on Stowell, “without money; father dead; mother takes boarders to make a living; wants to go to college and learn to be something a little better than a backwoods lumberman. He gets enough money together somehow—I think you said they borrowed it, ‘Chick’?”
That youth nodded silently.
“Yes, borrowed enough to pay the tuition fee. And then he’s thrown on his own resources to make enough to buy himself things to eat. I suppose even these backwoods beggars have to eat once in a while, Clint? And having learned how to knit blue-woolen mittens—awfully funny looking things, they are—he just goes ahead and knits them, rather than starve to death, and tries to sell them to a lot of superior beings like you and me here, not knowing in his backwoods ignorance that we only wear Fownes’s or Dent’s, and that we naturally look down on fellows who——”
“Oh, dry up, old man,” growled “Chick.” “I haven’t been saying anything against the duffer. Of course he’s plucky and all that. You needn’t jump on a fellow so.”
“Yes, he has got grit, and that’s a fact,” Clinton allowed. “Only, of course, knitting—well, it’s a bit out of the ordinary, eh?”