“Well, for one thing, you never joined a fraternity. I know,” quickly, “that the frats are abused, as every good thing is abused, but fundamentally they’re good. When it comes to humanizing a man, rounding him out, which is the purpose of college life, they’re just as essential as a course in the sciences.”
“Unfortunately,” commented Roberts, drily, “the attitude of a student to the Greeks is a good deal like that of woman to man. She can’t marry until she is asked. I was likewise never sufficiently urged.”
“In that case,” laughed Armstrong, “I’ll have to acquit you on that count. There wasn’t, however, anything to prevent you warming up socially. No student has to be asked to do that. You and Elice, for instance, took your courses at the same time. Normally you would have met at social doings on a hundred occasions; and still you have never really done so until to-night, several years after you were graduated. You can’t square yourself on that score.” 58
“No,” acquiesced Roberts with judicial slowness; “and still a man with one suit of clothes and that decidedly frayed at the seams labors under appreciable social disadvantages even in a democratic university.” He smiled, a tolerant, reminiscent smile. “I recall participating tentatively a bit early in my career, but the result was not entirely a success. My stock went below par with surprising rapidity; so I took it off the market.”
Armstrong glanced at the listening girl swiftly. Purposely he was trying to draw the other man out—and for her benefit. But whatever the girl was thinking her face was non-committal. He returned to the attack.
“All right,” he shifted easily; “we’ll pass charge number two likewise. One thing at least, however, you’ll admit you could have done. You might have taken up athletics. You were asked often enough, I know personally—nature did a lot for you in some things; and as for clothes—the fewer you have in athletics the better. You could have mixed there and warmed up to your heart’s content. Isn’t it so?”
This time Roberts laughed.
“I was engaged in athletics—all the time I was in the University,” he refuted. 59
“The deuce you were! I never knew before—All right, I bit. How was that, Darley?”
“Simple enough, I’m sure,” drily. “I venture the proposition that I sawed more wood and stoked more furnaces during my course than any other student that ever matriculated. I had four on the string constantly.”