“I’d hate to be world weary as you are, Warren,” said Jack Billings, dryly. “Well, we’re having early supper to-night, fellows, so we’d better move along. Come in and see us, Merrill, when you get straightened out. By the way, it’s Faculty Reception to-night; about seven-thirty; better come along and meet the tyrants. We’re all going—all except Kitty.”
Kitty looked across in greater surprise than ever and blinked. “Thought I’d go,” he said.
“You think so, but you’ll forget it,” laughed Jack.
After the visitors had dispersed to their own rooms, Phineas turned to Rodney and said, “I haven’t a very good memory for some things. Sometimes I forget. They like to joke about it. I don’t mind, of course. It amuses them, Maynard.”
“I see.” Rodney didn’t correct him this time. What was the use?
CHAPTER V
RODNEY ENCOUNTERS WATSON
School began on Wednesday, and by Friday Rodney was pretty well settled down in his groove. Finding his place at Westcott’s was easy enough. As it happened he was the only First Form boy there, although Tad Mudge, Warren Hoyt and Tom Trainor were of his age. Phineas Kittson and Pete Greenough were sixteen; Eustace Trowbridge—called Stacey—and Jack Billings were seventeen. On the whole they were a nice lot of fellows, Rodney thought, although they were rather different from the boys he knew at home. He liked Jack Billings immensely; everyone did, he found; and he liked Tad Mudge and Pete Greenough and Tom Trainor. Warren Hoyt he thought disagreeable. Warren put on airs and pretended to be bored by everything. Stacey Trowbridge was a quiet fellow who kept to himself a good deal and was hard to know. Rodney thought that he would probably like Stacey if he ever got really acquainted with him. As for Phineas—well, Rodney realized that he would have to make the best of that strange roommate of his. Not that Kitty caused any trouble. He didn’t. Let Kitty alone and Kitty let you alone. He seemed to live in a different altitude from the others, on some higher and finer plane. He studied a good deal, had a wonderful memory for lessons, and stood well in class. When he was not poring over his lessons he was either exercising or reading books on physiology, hygiene and kindred subjects, of which he possessed a veritable library. When Kitty exercised he hung a pedometer from his belt, took a stop-watch in hand, and walked violently about the country for hours at a time. Kitty’s theory, as Rodney soon learned, was that if a fellow developed his lungs properly his other organs would look out for themselves. He talked a good deal about something he called “glame,” and inhalation and expansion and contraction, and Rodney got rather tired after a while of those subjects. But, on the whole, Phineas was a well-meaning, good-humored chap who bothered no one and who was quite contented to be left to his own devices.
The entering class that year numbered twenty-seven. Rodney had a chance to look them over Thursday evening when the new First Form held a meeting in the Assembly Hall and organized. A fellow named Sanderson was elected president, and a youth named White was chosen for secretary and treasurer. Rodney took small part in the proceedings, but met, after the business meeting was over, quite a number of his classmates. They seemed a decent lot, he thought. They ranged in age from twelve to fifteen and hailed from seven States, most of them living within a half day’s journey. Rodney was the only Nebraska representative and came from farther away than any of them, except one boy whose home was in Colorado.