Half an hour later, Roger Hardie was giving the last tug to his necktie before a square of looking-glass that still adhered to the end of the locker tier near the window, and Talbot, swinging a couple of books by a strap, lounged near. Eaton was getting into his clothes a few feet distant, bravely chanting away on a ragtime song in the face of derisive comments from Wilmot, the manager, who sat on the bench nursing a couple of footballs. Farther down, Dunn’s tongue was running wild before an audience of worthies of uncertain intent, whose grins might denote either innocent amusement or guile. Harrison was minding his own business in his usual quiet fashion.

“That’s the second time my socks have disappeared!” sputtered Dunn. “This is the worst gang of thieves I ever got into. You couldn’t keep a thing here if you had a steel vault and a watchman.”

“You’ve probably got ’em on,” suggested Wilmot.

As Dunn had very little on, and was notably bare as to feet, this suggestion could not have been serious. He glanced down, none the less, and earned thereby a unanimous jeer.

“I don’t see how you could lose them,” observed Sumner. “They’re the most conspicuous things in school. I recognized you by ’em this morning a block away, before I could see your face.”

“Oh, you did!” was the best Dunn could do in rejoinder.

“I never saw anything like them but once,” Wilmot observed thoughtfully. “A clown had ’em on in the circus. They seemed all right there.”

“They cost two dollars, anyway!” ejaculated Dunn, who was turning over football trousers on the floor and kicking shoes into corners.

“Tyrian purple always did come high,” Wilmot said softly. “Aren’t you ready yet, Jim? This excitement is getting on my nerves. I feel as if there was an officer here with a search warrant. Perhaps Lije took ’em, Dunn. He might use ’em for a necktie.”

“If I could find the fellow who swiped ’em, I’d use him for a necktie!” exploded Dunn. “It’s a low-down trick to hide a man’s clothes. No one but a kid would do it. You fellows belong with the rubes who tie knots in shirts at the village swimming-hole!”

This violent arraignment awoke new chuckles of merriment. Dunn was becoming interesting.

“That’s a good suggestion,” said Wilmot. “Harrison might try that next time.”

“Shut up, Baldie, and get dressed!” admonished Ben Tracy, in a low tone. “You’re playing right into their hands. You don’t need the socks to get to your room.”

At this advice, the wisdom of which he recognized, Dunn smothered his indignation and went on with his dressing in silence. The crowd, perceiving that the fun was over, began to scatter. Eaton put on his coat and turned to Wilmot. “All ready, Steve! Come on, Pete!”

“I’m going up to Hardie’s room for a while,” said Talbot, who had been talking in the corner with Roger.

Wilmot slid over toward the door. “There are your socks on the bench, Dunn!” called Eaton.

“I must have been sitting on them all the time,” Wilmot explained contritely from the doorway. “I felt something hot under me. Hope I didn’t hurt them.”

“They seem all right, just as bright and sporty as ever. Want ’em, Dunn?” Eaton held out the lost socks toward their owner; but Dunn, having definitely adopted a policy of indifference, turned his back on his tormentors and continued the conversation with Tracy as if he had lost all interest in the object of dispute—in the end taking possession of his property without let or hindrance.

Talbot, having explained the point in physics which was the nominal object of his call on Hardie, sat by the window and talked about school affairs.

“The trouble with our athletics is that we are in a big city,” he said, “with lots of interesting things to take up our time outside of school. Then we’re mostly too young to be very serious about anything. In the big schools like Hillbury the fellows are older; and in the boarding-schools they haven’t any outside attractions nor any liberty, and there’s really nothing else to do but play something.”

“You always have men on the college teams,” remarked Roger.

“Oh, they do well in college, but they’re more mature then. Here there’s always a whole lot of fooling going on such as you saw this afternoon. You can’t change a fellow like Wilmot. He’s an awfully nice chap, but he’s never serious, and he spoils the atmosphere for the hard, determined kind of work that makes good teams.”

“Harrison seems serious enough,” said Hardie. “I should think he’d make a mighty good captain.”

“That’s right! He’s about the best fellow we’ve got. That’s the reason I had hopes of the football, but it looks now as if it was going in the same old way. If we could only win in football, we could go to work with more courage on the crew.”

“The crew is always good, isn’t it?”

“We seem to do better with rowing than anything else. There’s no fooling there, I can tell you. From the time you lift out the boat until you put her away on the supports there isn’t a minute wasted.”

“I should think it would be monotonous, just pulling an oar with the same motion all the time. Of course the race is exciting, but the training must be terribly tiresome.”

“That shows you’ve never tried it,” answered Talbot, laughing. “The race is hard and disagreeable because you try to pull yourself completely out, but the practice is fun all the time. We have good coaching, and every day we try to get into the swing a little better, and overcome some one of our faults. Then the movement of the boat is fine. You can’t imagine what a pleasure it is to feel it going under you right—to know that there is no check between strokes, that everybody is getting away quick and sharp, and pulling just as he ought to.”

“I don’t understand,” returned Roger, “but I’d like to try it.”

“You must come out. You have the right build for rowing.”

Talbot glanced out at the window and waved his hand at Tracy, who was crossing the yard to the dormitory. “We’re a long way from that yet,” he went on. “We might possibly beat Newbury and Trowbridge in rowing, but we can’t get the cup without football.”

“There’s baseball,” suggested Roger.

“No hope there. What can you expect with a fellow like Stover running things? We never were a baseball school, anyway. It’s the fellows who play on the corner lots that make the baseball players. Our fellows do too much sailing and rowing and playing golf in the summer to have time for baseball practice.”

He rose to leave. “Just go in hard on the football, and don’t give up if you don’t get all the credit you deserve. They have a way here of starting with a team made up on paper and keeping to it through the season; but it’s a bad custom which I want to see broken. I give Dunn about three weeks to talk himself off the field. Then if you don’t get in, it’ll be your own fault.”

The door closed behind the first really sympathetic visitor Roger Hardie had yet received. He had been in school long enough to know that the captain of the crew on the whole outranked any other captain, and that Talbot, in spite of his marked tendency to see the dark spots in the future, and to be over-frank in his criticism, was yet one of the steady-flowing springs of school energy, respected perforce even by those who did not like him. To have Talbot as a friend was to be sure of a stout defender, if not of a persuasive advocate.

Thrilled with gratitude for the attention shown him, his ambition kindling into flame from the spark of hope which Talbot had struck, Roger resolved to show himself worthy of his patron’s favor; he would make something of himself in the school life for the honor of the boy who had befriended him, if such a result lay within the reach of hard work, or patience, or devotion. That making something of himself in the school life meant to him mainly achieving a success in the school athletics, was but natural. We who are older may rightly insist that there are other ways of serving one’s school than by scoring touch-downs or pulling on a winning crew; but a boy cannot be expected to see life through the spectacles of the aged. He must grow through his own ideals, not those of his parents. If his opinion as to the importance of athletics is a fallacy, it is at least a far more wholesome one to hold than many cherished by adults.

Roger held his head higher than usual as he went downstairs to dinner, and in his plain but not unintelligent face the look of stolidity had given place to a brighter expression.

“I was glad to see you playing to-day,” said Mr. Adams, pleasantly. “It seemed to me that you were starting in very well.”

“Thank you,” returned Roger, quietly.

“Didn’t you say you hadn’t played before?” asked Ben Tracy.

Hardie shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I’ve never played on a school team. At Hillbury I played end on my class team in some of the games.”

“That’s not bad,” said Louis, with respect. “They have great class teams at those schools.”

“It isn’t like playing on a school team, though,” offered Dunn. “You don’t have any great responsibility.”

“The class feeling is pretty strong sometimes,” replied Roger, “and the games are always hard.”

“I liked the way you got into the play,” said Mr. Adams. “The house ought to give a good account of itself on the playground this year.”

“I couldn’t do anything at all to-day,” observed Dunn. “I have to feel just right to do myself credit. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

Redfield exchanged a glance of intelligence with Louis Tracy. They knew what had disturbed Dunn’s slumbers,—the memory of a late lunch in Number Six.

“You must be careful about food and bed hours if you want to be in good condition,” observed Mr. Adams, apparently oblivious to the exchange of messages. “It takes some self-control to keep in training with a pocket full of money.”

“I’d like to have a chance to try it once,” sighed Redfield, to whose mind the suggestion of a pocket full of money conveyed the idea of a continuously replenished supply. Much of his allowance never reached his pocket at all; it was spent in paying back bills.