“I’ll risk it, I guess. You mean well, Dana, and I—well, I hope you succeed—next year. Come around and see me.”
Anderson, captain of the baseball team, to whom Hansel sought and obtained an introduction, told him he was wasting his time, and refused to lend even moral assistance. Field, president of the fourth class, looked bored, and said it was a good work and he hoped Hansel would succeed, but—er—it was a difficult undertaking; “Every fellow doesn’t look at the matter in the same light, you know, and—er—well, come around again and let me know how you get along.”
To add to the difficulties, Hansel was practically an outsider. While he was a member of the third class, yet he knew scarcely six men in it. The other members had been together for two years and had formed their groups and coteries long since, and to gain admittance to these was likely to prove no easy task. Had Hansel come up to Beechcroft from some nearby school it would have been different; he would scarcely have failed to find others who had attended the same institution and who would have taken him up and, possibly, secured him admission into their clubs. But no one at Beechcroft had ever so much as heard of the little academy out in Ohio from which Hansel had migrated, and so there were no outstretched hands to welcome him into the inner circles of class life. At the end of his second week at Beechcroft Hansel was well acquainted with Bert and Harry, knew most of the members of the first squad well enough to talk to, and had a nodding acquaintance with some or six other chaps. Of course he had no intention of allowing such a state of affairs to continue for long, and he had a shrewd idea that after the first one or two games, by which time he would have become identified as one of the school eleven, he would find it fairly easy to make acquaintances. But meanwhile he felt rather outside of things and, had he had time, would probably have experienced qualms of homesickness. He wrote more letters to Davis City, Ohio, during that fortnight than during any subsequent period of like length, and his mother’s replies, full of the trivial but vastly interesting happenings of the little town, were happy events. The first offer of assistance, in what Harry jocularly called his “crusade against vice,” came finally from an unexpected quarter.
Harry’s invitations to visit him were frequent, but so far Hansel had not entered the study in Weeks Hall since the evening of his arrival. And so, on the afternoon preceding the first football game, when the practice was light and over early, he accepted the invitation. He had not yet abandoned hope of winning Harry over to active membership in the “crusade”; and, besides, he liked the football manager better than any of his few acquaintances. Harry roomed alone in a suite of study and bedroom on the second floor of Prince. The study was plainly but richly furnished and was a revelation to Hansel. The walls were covered with dark-green cartridge paper, against which hung a scant half-dozen good pictures. Over each door was a shelf holding a cast. The floor was painted and bare save for a few rugs in quiet tones of olive and gray and dull red. A handsome mahogany study table took up the center of the apartment and a few easy chairs with good lines stood about. These, with a comfortable divan, heaped with pillows, practically comprised the furnishings of a room which was at once simple and in good taste. Harry was at work at the table when Hansel entered.
“Busy?” asked the latter. “I just came in to chin a bit, and so if——”
“Busy? Not at all; merely studying,” was the reply. “It isn’t often any fellow has the decency to come in and interrupt me when I’m studying. First thing I know I’ll have brain fever! Sit down and rest your face and hands.” He pushed his books and paper aside, laid down his pen, and leaned back in his chair. “How’s the crusade coming on?”
“I’m afraid it’s at a standstill at present,” answered Hansel with a smile. “The fact is, I’m still recruiting.”
“Like Falstaff,” suggested Harry. “How many have you got?”
“Only you so far.”
“Me? No, you don’t! I refuse to be drafted. I—I’ve water on the brain and can’t fight. Scratch me off, if you please, general.”