For a moment, Quincy was rejoiced. And then it occurred to him that Mr. Deering might have acknowledged the paper’s receipt—if he had thought so highly of it—might have asked his permission about reading it aloud. So Quincy withdrew into his shell. And since only Garsted was there, congratulating him, he turned his resentment upon him.
“I hope you liked it,” he said icily.
“You’re a mighty independent young chap, Burt,” Garsted went on, “I like that.”
“Thanks.”
Garsted stopped, causing Quincy to do likewise and to face him. And then, he smiled.
“Look here, Burt,” he said softly, “Deering’s a strange, sloppy man. But he’s the biggest man here. Don’t take what he did amiss. If I know him, he forgot even to invite you to his tea. That’s just like him. One day, when his interest in your paper is a bit subsided, he’ll recall that there’s more to you than it—that you’re behind it. Then he’ll drop you a note. Meantime, however, don’t be sensitive—with him.”
There was a pause. Quincy was looking a trifle sheepish. Garsted was laughing: “Save your sensitiveness for other things, Burt—and come and see me.” He put out his hand.
Quincy inclined his head slightly and as their hands clasped their eyes met. Garsted caught the deep pathos of this boy, lost and alone in a college campus. He felt a thrill as one does at some beautiful flash of thought. He saw the contrast between this silent, stubborn boy and the easy obviousness of the things about him.
“Let me see,” he said in a still more quiet tone, “these indefinite invitations are insulting.” It was the second time he had caught the cause of Quincy’s trouble. “What about a date to-night? Can you come?”
Quincy looked at him. The first general wave of invitations, and that succeeding flood when he was harnessed to the track team, had died utterly away. He had been alone for three weeks. He was sensitive and he was skeptical. But Garsted was different. And it was hard to transfer upon him so sustainedly his irritation at Mr. Deering. Garsted was a close-set fellow. His head was long, almost ponderous, with coarse, blond, short-cropped hair. His nose was massive, angularly chiseled, his mouth was broad and showed a row of teeth immaculately white and separate one from the other. All of him seemed roughly hewn out of some stubborn stone—abrupt, big, yet anomalously delicate. As he spoke, he stammered at the beginning of each sentence; but once over this initial barrier, he went on freely, until the pause.