Professor White’s efforts in Jack’s behalf were not limited to the talk with Tracy. He saw Joe Perkins and Hanson and King and several others with whom Jack came in daily contact and asked for the boy fair treatment. And he encouraged Jack to visit him and, when the latter did so, used every effort to hearten him. On the whole, it is safe to say that to the professor belonged a greater part of the credit for the betterment of the boy’s condition. Such was the state of affairs when, on a certain Saturday evening, about the middle of the month, Jack and Anthony sat talking on the edge of Mrs. Dorlon’s porch.
Anthony had washed up his supper dishes and Jack had just strolled back from dinner at the training-table. The moon, well into its first quarter, was sailing in a clear sky over the tops of the elms in the yard. The evening was musical with the hum and whirr of early insects and the varied sounds from open windows. Somewhere farther up the curve of Elm Street an uncertain hand was coaxing the strains of Mandalay from a guitar, and now and then the faint music of a piano floated across from Walton Hall. Anthony had lighted his pipe and, with its bowl aglow in the dusk, was leaning against a pillar, one knee tucked up under his chin. Jack sat a yard away, his hands in his pockets, staring up at the moon.
“Did you ever write poetry, Anthony?” he asked suddenly.
“No.” Anthony sucked reflectively at the pipe and shook his head slowly. “No, I’ve had the measles and whooping-cough and scarlatina, but I’ve never had poetry yet. Of course, I’ve tried my hand at blank verse in Latin, but it wasn’t poetry; even the instructor acknowledged that.”
“Oh, I meant just plain every-day poetry, you know,” Jack explained. “I thought if you had you could tell me something about it.”
“Well, I didn’t say that I didn’t know poetry when I saw it,” answered Anthony. “I’ve read a good deal of it, you see. What do you want to know?”
“I want to know whether you have to have all your lines rhyme.”
“Depends, I guess. What are you going to do, anyway, turn into a poet?”
“No, only I thought I’d try my hand at writing some verses for the fellows to sing at the games, you know. The Purple says we ought to have some new songs for the Robinson game.”
“Oh. Well, now, from what I’ve seen of such things it doesn’t matter any whether lines rhyme or don’t rhyme, I should say. As long as the words fit the music the rhymes just hump along as best they can. Have you written anything yet?”