The next morning—it was the day for election of a football captain—Roger found Pete and Jack Sumner in the cloak-room talking earnestly together. “I want to ask a favor of you fellows,” he began, as soon as he caught sight of them. “Everybody out at Adams’s has invitations to the Fridays, except Dunn. He is awfully cut up about it.”

“I can’t help it,” said Talbot. “It isn’t my fault if he doesn’t deserve any.”

“He’s no worse than Snobson and Newgeld,” insisted Roger. “They both got in.”

“Not with my help,” retorted Talbot. “What are you bothering about it for? He wouldn’t do it for you.”

“I don’t care whether he would or not. It just isn’t a fair deal to leave him out.” Roger turned to Sumner. “There’s no use talking to Pete; he’s nothing but a savage. You’ll get it for him, Jack, won’t you? You can work your mother for it. Think what it would be yourself to be left out of a thing when all the others are in!”

“Think what it would be to be Dunn,” said Pete; “that’s a much more horrible thought.”

But Sumner was a friendly soul. “If you’re really set on it, I’ll see what I can do,” he said. “I shouldn’t want him to commit suicide out at Adams’s!”

Sumner’s words were exactly those which Ben Tracy had used to Dunn the evening before, but his deeds, as will appear later, were wholly different.

Before the football meeting, Talbot suggested that Horr deserved the captaincy, and would perhaps make as good a captain as any one else. Roger assented readily, and cast his vote in accordance with Pete’s suggestion. With Harrison, Eaton, Talbot, Sumner, and other boys of the first class out, there was left little room for choice. He had not thought of himself as a possible candidate. When the votes were counted, and the announcement was made that Horr had eight votes, Hardie four, with one each for McDowell and Ben Tracy, Roger felt grateful that four fellows had thought so well of him as to give him the compliment of their votes, but it did not occur to him either to question the loyalty of friends or to wonder why Horr should be preferred before him.

A day or two later Dunn came to the dinner-table beaming with joy, and slapped Ben Tracy hard on the shoulder.

“I’ve got it!” he announced jubilantly. “It’s all right.”

“Got what?” asked Ben, staring blankly. The face which for the last forty-eight hours had reflected nothing but spleen now shone with satisfaction.

Dunn flourished a square white envelope. “My invitation for the Fridays. It was just delayed.”

“Good for you!” exclaimed Cable. “I congratulate you,” purred Mrs. Adams. Hardie smiled, but said nothing; Ben Tracy continued to stare, puzzled to find that some good angel had relieved him of his unwelcome task.

After dinner Dunn drew Ben into the corner of the general room, and poured fervent expressions of gratitude into his ear. “Talbot and Hardie thought they were going to get me stung,” he exclaimed, “but they didn’t succeed. I had some friends myself! You’ve helped me in this thing, all right, Benny, and I won’t forget it!”

“I haven’t done anything,” protested Ben, weakly, “at least nothing worth while.”

“It’s worth a lot to me. I’ll get even with you for it some day,—and I’ll get even with that sucker, Hardie, too; he’s put those fellows against me.”

Dunn’s first step in getting even with Hardie was taken that very evening, and the method of it showed that some of Jason’s brain cells were more highly developed than those on which he relied in the preparation of lessons.

Just before bedtime he knocked at Roger’s door. “Hello!” he cried, putting his head into the room. “Will you give me a lift on this confounded Virgil?”

“Certainly,” answered Roger. “Come in—. Doesn’t your trot tell you about it?” he added with a sly grin. Dunn still adhered to the theory that the literal translation affords an excellent short cut to proficiency in an ancient language. The twenties and thirties that he received on examinations were fully offset, Dunn maintained, by the great success of his daily recitations. He always knew what the Latin ought to say, anyway; he never made any crazy blunders such as Redfield perpetrated.

“I can’t make connections with the trot in this place,” answered Dunn, calmly, “and Ben can’t. I don’t believe you can, either, if you did get eighty on the exam.”

Roger soon proved that he could—indeed, the problem presented no difficulties except such as Dunn’s stupidity had raised or his cunning invented. Having thus paved the way for his main business, Dunn leaned against the door-post, and, holding a finger between the leaves of his Virgil to strengthen the impression that he was stopping casually on the way back to his interrupted work, began to talk.

“You didn’t get the captaincy, did you?”

Roger gave a good-natured little laugh. “No, I didn’t, and I didn’t expect to.”

“You came mighty near it.”

“Four votes out of fourteen—that’s not very near.”

“I don’t mean that. You know what I mean.”

Hardie shook his head.

“The day before the election it was all settled that you were to get it. I heard so from McDowell and Bumpus and two or three others. Then something happened, and the vote went the other way.”

“What happened?” Roger was listening eagerly.

“Talbot went against you and bulldozed ’em into electing Horr. You know he’s always got to have his way.”

Roger smiled bravely. “He probably thought Horr would make a better captain.”

“I don’t know what he thought. I know what he did. He pretends to be a friend of yours, too.”

“He is a friend,” said Roger, quickly.

“The way he treated you didn’t look much like it. Good night.”

Dunn returned to his room fairly well satisfied with himself; he had given Hardie something to think of that would take down his insufferable conceit, a conceit which Dunn was convinced must be the worse since it was masked by such a quiet exterior.

In fact, if thinking was all Roger was expected to do, Dunn’s mission of malice was wholly successful. Roger did think, lying awake an hour after he went to bed, and fighting vainly against an insistent mental activity that would not be cajoled by firm resolutions or new arrangements of pillow; but the direction which his thoughts took was different from what Jason had anticipated. A week before, he would have ridiculed the idea of his being made captain; his ambition did not fly so high. Now, when the opportunity had come and gone, when the honor which, it seemed, had been almost within his reach, was bestowed upon another, he understood how much he should have prized it. Why had Talbot interfered against him? Surely not from ill-will, for the record of the season proved him as stanch a friend as an insignificant new boy ever acquired; nor from personal liking for Horr—they belonged to wholly different sets in school. It must be, then, that Pete regarded him as incompetent for the position. Moreover, if Pete thought so, it was probably true; he was just a meek, harmless, flabby sort of fellow who happened to be able to play a fair game at end, but wasn’t fit for leadership! Dunn’s shot had wounded, but not in the spot at which it was aimed. Hardie’s self-esteem was hurt, not his trust in Pete.

The next morning he turned over the subject again as he dressed. “Pete was right to think as he did, and yet he was wrong,” he said to himself. “I should have made just as good a captain as Horr. The trouble with me is that I’m always waiting for some one to recognize me and push me forward. I haven’t confidence enough in myself; there’s where I’ve got to change. I can do things when I have to. Why do I always act as if I couldn’t?”

He rode into town that morning with Mike. Mike’s society was usually a pleasure. His mind was always brimful of the present. He knew exactly what he thought on all the matters that entered into his experience, and exactly what he wanted to do. Mike never hesitated through bashfulness, nor wasted opportunities because of lack of faith to accept them!

“You ought to have been football captain,” declared Mike, as they stood on the back platform of a crowded in-bound car. “You’d make a lot better one than Horr. Horr really doesn’t know the game. I told Pete Talbot so, too. They needn’t think that because you’re quiet, you haven’t any push in you. I know better!”

“Thank you for your good opinion, Mike,” returned the smiling Hardie. “What did Pete do, fire you out?”

“No, he said he didn’t know but I was right. It ’ud have been fine to have a captain at Adams’s. We haven’t had one since I’ve been in school. There’s no one else there who’ll ever come near it.” He stopped, and a sudden gleam flashed over his face. “I’ll tell you what to do,” he exclaimed, “make the crew and be crew captain. That’ll be better yet!”

Roger laughed aloud. “Make the Harvard Varsity, why don’t you say? I may make the pair-oar if I’m lucky.”

“You’ll never make anything if you talk like that,” answered shrewd Mike. “You’re as bad as Jason, only the other way round. Jason thinks he’s everything when he isn’t anything, and you tell people you aren’t anything, and they believe you! You tell it and act it both. That’s not the way to do.”

And Hardie, being an open-minded youth, accepted this wisdom from the lips of a babe, and resolved immediately that he wouldn’t act the incapable any more, even if he must needs remain such. He didn’t tell Mike so, however; that would be throwing improper encouragement to small boys who criticised their betters. Instead, he gave a sudden jerk to the visor of the boy’s cap that brought it forward on his nose, and said reprovingly: “There’s one thing certain, Mike, you’ll never suffer from over-modesty. Now don’t say anything more about the football captain. Horr’s elected, and we’re all going to help him the best we can.”

“Sure!” answered Mike, as he calmly restored his cap to the proper place. “Don’t you suppose I know enough for that? I wouldn’t say what I did to any one but you.”

Dunn went to his first Friday in high feather, picturing to himself in advance the conquests he should make. Dancing, he felt, was his strong point. But Trask and Wilmot, the head ushers for the day, had laid strict commands on their subordinates, and Jason was introduced to none but “pills.” He did not suspect this fact until the afternoon was two-thirds gone, when after beseeching three ushers in succession to present him to Molly Randolph, a much talked-of “queen,” and being put off with flimsy pretexts, he at last discovered that there was a plot against his dignity. After that he sulked in the corner to which ungallant youths retired when the attractive partners were taken and only pills remained disengaged. Hardie, blest beyond his deserts, made the acquaintance of numerous favorites and danced the german with Helen Talbot, who amused him with a vivacious narrative of certain disputes with Joe, in which, with the help of her older brother, she came out victorious. Miss Helen vanquished Roger also, for she got him to promise her a football hatband, which, as she frankly confessed, “Joe would never give me in the world.”