“That’s just imagination, Dud. You can’t expect fellows to fall all over themselves and hug you! You’ve got to show ’em that you’re ready to be friends. You’ve got to make the start yourself. What do you do when someone says ‘Let’s do this or that’? You mutter something about having to dig Latin or math and sneak off. Fellows naturally think you don’t want to do the things they do. Now today, for instance——”
“I couldn’t have gone, Jimmy, with this plaguey toothache!”
“Why, no, I guess you couldn’t. But, thunderation, Dud, if it isn’t a toothache it’s something else. You’ve always got some perfectly wonderful excuse for beating it about the time the fun begins. Not that you missed much this afternoon, for you didn’t, barring a lot of tired muscles, but you often do miss things. To be what you call a ‘mixer,’ Dud, you’ve got to ‘mix,’ and you don’t know the first thing about it. Fellows like you, all right, what they see of you, but you don’t give them a chance.”
Dud stared thoughtfully at the green shade before him. “Ye-yes, I suppose that’s true, Jimmy. But I don’t like to stick around when fellows are getting up things because I think that maybe they won’t want me in on it and that if I’m there they’ll think they have to ask me.”
“Huh! What if they do have to ask you? Let ’em! Then when they see that you’re a regular feller they’ll ask you next time without having to.”
“But I wonder if I am.”
“Am what?” asked Jimmy ungrammatically.
“A ‘regular feller.’ Maybe I’m not. I wonder——”
Jimmy threw up his hands in despair. “Oh, gee, he’s at it again! Dud, what you want to do is stop wondering. You’re the finest little wonderer that ever came down the pike, all right, but you spend so much time at it that you don’t get anywhere. Now, you take my advice, old chap, and stop wondering whether fellows like you or don’t like you. Just get out and butt in a little. When you see a crowd walk right into the middle of it and find out whether it’s a fight or a frolic. And, whatever it is, take a hand. Now there’s some mighty good advice, Dud, take it from me. I didn’t know I had it in me! And let me tell you another thing, kid. If you expect to have a show for the first team you want to crawl out of your shell and rub shoulders with fellows. Get hunky with the first team crowd, do you see? Be—be more of a—well, more of a regular feller, like I said before. Don’t try too hard to be popular, though. Fellows get onto that and won’t stand for it. Just—just be natural!”
“I guess I’m being natural,” answered Dud, with a smile, “and that is where the trouble is. I guess I’ll have to wait until next year. A lower middle fellow feels sort of fresh if he tries to mix in with upper middlers.”