“I’ve thought it out, I say. You know my case—the case at home, I mean.”
Sam nodded. Trojan’s father, a traveling salesman, was away on a long trip through the West; his mother was a semi-invalid, quite incapable of coming to her son’s assistance in an emergency like this.
“Dropping out’d be the simplest and the best,” Walker went on. “I guess there are other schools—if there aren’t any to take me, I can go to work somewhere.”
“Nonsense! You stay here!”
“I won’t. This is my own affair—I’ve got to settle it for myself.” Then his voice rose. “Sam, they didn’t give me a square deal! It wasn’t fair! They trapped me; they caught me by a trick! I won’t stand it! I’m through with them—I want to be through with anybody that’ll treat me as I’ve been treated!”
Sam stared at him in perplexity. The old Trojan had been easy going, good natured, a fellow who preferred compromise; the new Trojan was curiously grim and determined and unyielding. There was a glint in his eye Sam had never seen there before; his jaw was set stubbornly. The Trojan was in earnest, in deadly earnest. Sam realized this, and his heart sank within him. Nevertheless, he was ready to fight manfully.
“You’re all wrong! It wasn’t a square deal—I’m with you there. But I’m not sure that wasn’t accidental—the way it happened, I mean. There’s something else, though—you can’t go ahead as if nobody but yourself was hit.”
“Oh! Can’t I?” growled the Trojan.
“You can’t, because we’re all in the row. I’m in up to my neck; there isn’t a fellow in the club who doesn’t feel that it’s his fight as well as yours and mine.”
“It’s all right to say that, only you can’t prove it.”