"For about twenty-four hours, yes. Don't interrupt me, Trotty; this isn't flattery, it's argument. You are a sensible person, as I have said; and don't let such considerations worry you. There are lots of other sensible persons in the class, too. Josh Traill, for one, and Manxome, and John Fisher and Shep McGee; they're all sensible people, and don't worry or think much about senior societies, though I suppose they all have a good chance to make one eventually, if any one has. But that isn't true of all the class. There is a large and important section of it that now, in the first term of freshman year, is thinking and talking nothing except about who will go to a junior fraternity next year, or a senior society two years hence. It's the one subject of conversation that seriously competes with professional baseball and college football, which is all you hear otherwise."
"Oh, no, Harry, you're hard on us. There's automobiles. And guns. And theaters. But why should you mind if a lot of geesers do talk about societies?"
"Well, it makes me sick, that's all. And when I say sick, I use the word in its British, or most vivid sense. It makes me sick, after England and after Harrow, to see a lot of what ought to be the best fellows in the class spending their waking hours in wondering about such rubbishy things.—Do you happen to be aware of an ornament of our class called Junius Neville LeGrand?"
"Golden locks and blue eyes? Yes, I know him. Acts rather well, they say."
"Yes; he's the kind I mean. At any rate, I seem to be in his good graces just at present. All sweetness and light; can't be too particular about telling me how good I am at French, and that sort of thing. In fact, he went so far to-day as to suggest that we might go over the French lesson together, and he's coming here presently to do it."
"But what's the matter with poor Junius? I thought he was as decent as such a painfully good-looking person could be."
"I'm not denying he's attractive. But if you'll stay for the French lesson I think I can show you what I'm talking about."
"But I don't take French."
"No, dear boy; you won't have to know French to see what I'm going to show you. Your rôle will consist of lying on the window-seat and being occupied with day before yesterday's News. Now listen; I have an idea that the beautiful Junius has recently made the discovery that I am the brother of James Wimbourne, of the junior class, pillar of the Yale football team and more than likely to go Bones, or anything he wants, next May. Hence this access of cordiality to poor little me, the obscure Freshman. I'm going to find out that, first."
"But there's no need of finding out that," said Trotwood naïvely. "I told him so myself, the other day."