"Well, I care about it, though I'm no good at track and not a member of the team," commented James.
"Perhaps if you were on it you wouldn't care quite so much.—Well, I'll train and I'll practise regularly, not because I want Yale to win the intercollegiates, but because I think it's good for me. It is good for the figure, and I'd rather have my muscles hard than soft."
"Well, it comes to the same thing, if you keep to it, and don't go gassing to the track people about your reasons."
"I shall go gassing to every human being I've a mind to.—And I'll tell you one thing there's going to be trouble about, if they try to use coercion, or the Yale spirit gag. That's about the Easter vacation; there's some talk of making the track people stay here and train. I have other plans for Easter."
"What are they?—For Heaven's sake, shut that window! What a fool you are, lying in a draught like that, with the track season beginning."
"James, you are every bit as bad as any of them, at heart," said Harry, shutting the window. "You wouldn't give a continental if I caught pneumonia and died in frightful agony, except for its cutting the university of a possible place in the intercollegiates.—Why, I'm going down to the Trotwoods' place in North Carolina. Trotty's going to have a large and brilliant house-party. Beatrice is going; he met her in New York not long ago and took a great shine to her." For Beatrice, in the company of Aunt Miriam, was paying a visit to the country of her dreams.
"What?" said James, pricking up his ears. "Beatrice going? Why hasn't Trotty asked me?"
"Didn't dare, I suppose," said Harry indifferently. "I'll make him, though, if you like. That's the way the King's visits are arranged; he says he'd like to visit some distinguished subject, and a third party tells the distinguished subject, who asks the King, who accepts. It's complicated, but it gets there in the end."
James did not seem particularly interested in points of etiquette in royal households.
"What do you make out of this business of the Carsons?" he asked.