“Yes, I think your father said something about it in one of his letters.”
“Yes; well, of course, I’ll do what I can for you if you want to make the team, but—there’s a bunch of pretty swift players here, and so—if you shouldn’t make it, you know, you mustn’t be disappointed. Of course, I can’t show any favoritism; you understand that; and——”
“Oh, that’s all right!” interrupted Hansel with a smile. “Don’t you bother about me; I’ll look out for myself, Bert. If I thought there was any likelihood of you showing favoritism I wouldn’t go out. But I don’t believe there’s any danger—at least, not unless you’ve changed a whole lot. Perhaps you don’t recall the fact, Bert, but you used to make life pretty uncomfortable for me when we were kids back there in Feltonville. I suppose you didn’t mean anything particularly, but I haven’t quite forgotten it.”
“Pshaw!” said Bert uncomfortably. “You were such a little sissy——”
“And I don’t suppose,” the other continued calmly, “that you were overpleased to have me for a roommate. For that matter, neither was I. But there wasn’t any help for it, and so I thought we’d make the best of it. What can’t be cured, you know, must be endured. I dare say we’ll get on pretty well together. At least, we know where we stand. You’ll find me pretty decent as long as you behave yourself. But”—Hansel arose and went toward the bedroom—“but none of those old tricks of yours, Bert.”
He disappeared, and Bert, sitting fairly open-mouthed and speechless with amazement, heard him pouring water into the bowl.
[CHAPTER II]
HANSEL DECLARES FOR REFORM
Two days later Hansel Dana had officially become a student at Beechcroft Academy, one of a colony of some one hundred and forty-odd youths of from twelve to twenty years of age, about half of whom lived in the two school dormitories and half in the village or in the occasional white-painted and green-shuttered residences along the way to it. (In Beechcroft parlance the former were called “Schoolers” and the latter “Towners,” and there was always more or less rivalry between them.) Hansel had passed his entrance examinations with a condition in Latin which he must work off during the fall term, and he was very well satisfied. Harry told him, in the words of Grover Cleveland, that “it was a condition and not a theory which confronted him,” but Hansel didn’t have any doubt as to his ability to work it off before the Christmas recess.