Larry’s parting word to Dick had been altogether hearty and cheerful, as we have seen; but after the parting had settled down into a fact accomplished, Larry spent some pretty lonesome evenings. Not because there wasn’t company enough; there is always plenty of that in any college boarding-house, to say nothing—in Larry’s case—of the lame dogs that came straggling in to get a boost over the mathematical hill. But an evening roomful of more or less hilarious and racketing fellows isn’t everything; and after the crowd broke up there was always the empty chair on the opposite side of the study table, and Dick’s bed, made up and never slept in, to remind Larry of his loss.

Meanwhile, there was Mrs. Grant to be considered. After a week had gone by without any move having been made to put anybody in with him, Larry cornered the motherly person one afternoon in the lower hall and asked her about it.

“If you could find somebody you’d like to room with, of course I’d be glad,” said the house-mother. “But I don’t like to ask you to put up with a stranger.”

“You know of somebody?” Larry asked.

“Yes; there is a young man here taking post-graduate work for his Master’s degree. He’s in the Chemical, and he’d like to come.”

Larry had an instantaneous and rather disquieting picture of himself rooming with something worse than an upperclassman—a man who had already been graduated, who was probably working against time, and who would be likely to object most strenuously to the lame dogs and other visitors.

“Will you let me look around a little and see if I can find somebody first?” he asked; and the reply was as kindly as his own mother could have made it.

“Certainly I will. Mr. Agnew seems to be a very pleasant gentleman, but he is at least ten years older than you are, and on that account ... as I say, if you can find somebody you’d like to room with—anybody you’d pick out would be all right with me.”

Larry fairly ducked at the mention of the “Chemical’s” age. That would settle it for fair. Why, good goodness—a fellow that old would have forgotten all about his undergraduate days and what he did himself when he was in the braying stage.

“I’ll look around,” said Larry hastily, and made his escape.

That evening, when there were half a dozen fellows in the room, Larry noticed again a thing he had been noticing for a week or more; which was the fact that little Purdick had stopped coming to the Man-o’-War—that he hadn’t shown up since that evening when he had outstayed the others to say his say about the frats and the classes and masses.

Also, Larry, trying to hammer the proper method of working a trig. problem into Ollie McKnight’s not any too mathematical head, was conscious of a duty unfulfilled. He had been meaning to look Purdick up and had neglected doing it.

“Hey, Belcher!” he called to a fellow stretching himself lazily on the bed that used to be Dick’s, “have you seen anything of Purdy lately? He’s in your section.”

“Nary a rag,” said the lazy one. “Dried up and blown away, I guess.”

McKnight looked up from his figuring pad.

“Friend o’ yours, Donnie—this Purdy person?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Larry.

“Ump. He’s having one fine, large, tough time, so the fellows tell me. Flunked out last year Freshman and had to take the work over. Nothing much to him but grit, but he’s got a peak load o’ that. Works in Hassler’s to keep going, but I haven’t seen him there for a week or so. Darned shame a fellow like that can’t get a little boost over the humps, I’ll say. If Old Sheddon had any heart she’d have scholarships, or something, for ’em.”

Larry let Purdick drop for the remainder of the session; but the under-thought, that he’d been neglecting something, kept trotting along just the same; that, together with the “flop-around,” as he was calling it, of one Ollie McKnight. From something that had been mighty nearly a snob at the beginning of the year, the son of Consolidated Steel was actually thawing down into a human person with decencies and sympathies a good bit like those of other fellows. That word about the Purdicks just now, for example.

At the half-past-nine-o’clock dispersal, when the roomful went straggling out by ones and twos, McKnight was still working on his final trig. problem. When he finished it he stretched himself luxuriously in his chair and stuck his hands into his pockets.

“Once more I can face Old Figures without batting an eye,” he exulted. Then: “You’re all kinds of a decent chap, Donnie.”

“Don’t I know it?” Larry grinned. “But I’m not as decent as I might be. If I were, I’d have looked Purdick up before this time. Maybe he’s sick.”

“Still worrying about that poor little rat, are you? I don’t wonder at it, if he’s a friend of yours. He needs somebody to worry for him.”

“I wish I could worry to some good purpose, Ollie.”

“Money?” said McKnight.

“If I had it—yes. I’d like to stake him for his course. Some of the fellows can romp their way through on the work-out track and it doesn’t hurt ’em. Purdy’s got the nerve for it, but that’s about all he has got.”

For a long minute McKnight sat trying to balance his pencil, end up, on one finger and apparently giving his entire attention to the accomplishment of the impossible feat. When he spoke again it was to say: “Donnie, once upon a time I was low-down enough to call you a ‘mucker’: you’re not one, but I am.”

“I don’t get you,” said Larry, and he meant it.

“I can mighty nearly put it into words of one syllable. I’m nineteen years old, Donnie, and up to date I can’t remember that I’ve ever done one single thing for anybody but Ollie McKnight—that is, nothing that has cost me anything.”

“Well, perhaps you haven’t had to.”

“That’s it; I haven’t. It’s been Dad’s money, ever since I can remember. If I wanted to throw a few dollars to the birds, I threw ’em—and got some more where they came from. It didn’t cost me anything.”

“You don’t have to tell me about it,” said Larry, meaning only to save the confider from possible future embarrassment.

“Don’t you go and trig the wheels,” McKnight put in quickly. “I’m not often taken this way, and it’ll do me good to unload and get it out of my system. What you said about little Purdy a few minutes ago—that you’d boost him through if you had the money—snagged me good and hard.”

“How was that?”

McKnight dug into a pocket and fished out a letter. It was typewritten on a Consolidated Steel letterhead, and he folded it over until he came to a paragraph near the end.

“Listen to this, and you’ll see what I mean,” he said; and then he read from the letter: “‘So you want a new car to enable you to cut a dash with the college boys and girls, do you? I was sort of hoping, Son, that your break into Old Sheddon would make you understand that there are some other things in the world besides having a good time, but it seems it hasn’t. But it’s all right with me. I’ve put two thousand dollars to your account in the college town bank, and you may buy a car with it—if that’s what you want more than anything else. But I should have been a pretty proud Dad if you’d wanted the money for something besides a plaything that you’ll wear out in a year.’”

“Well?” said Larry, when McKnight refolded the letter and put it back in his pocket.

McKnight didn’t answer the implied query. Instead, he put one of his own.

“How far would two thousand dollars go toward boosting little Purdy through his four years, Donnie?”

“How far?—Great cats! it would take him all the way through. It’s as much as, or more than, I expect to spend in the four years!”

“All right,” said McKnight coolly. “I’ll write you a check for it when I get back to the house.”

“But see here—good goodness, Ollie, you can’t do anything like that!” Larry broke out. “In the first place, Purdy won’t take it—no fellow would; and in the next—”

“Let’s knock the pins down in one alley before they’re set up in another,” cut in the offhand maker of scholarships. “Of course, one of the conditions would have to be that Purdy doesn’t know where it comes from. We’ll call it the Red-Wagon Scholarship, and let it go at that.”

“But even then, he’d consider it a loan and want to pay it back.”

“You can’t pay a scholarship back. But that’ll be all right; if he ever gets fixed so he can, let him pass it along—boost some other fellow who needs it. You may as well quit chucking hurdles in the way, Donnie. This is the first time I’ve ever given anything that’s cost me something, and you can’t choke me off. Besides, I’d like to shock Dad—just this one time, you know. I’d give a hen worth fifty dollars if I could be there to see, when he gets the news.”

“Then you won’t buy a car?”

“Not so you could notice it—not this year, anyway. When you come to think of it, it isn’t good form for a Freshie to be daddlin’ around in a little red wagon anyhow. Which reminds me that it isn’t good form for me to stay daddlin’ around here and keeping you out o’ bed. So I’m gone.”

“Hold on a second and I’ll go with you,” said Larry, reaching for his cap and overcoat.

“Whichward ho, at this time o’ night?” questioned the son of much money, as they went out together.

“I’m going to see if I can find out what’s become of Charlie Purdick,” Larry returned. And at the parting moment: “Sure you won’t change your mind, Ollie, after you’ve slept on it?”

“Don’t you worry. I’ve got a lot of weaknesses, Donnie, but that isn’t one of ’em. You go find Purdy.”

“I’m gone,” said Larry; and he turned down the cross street, while McKnight swung off in the opposite direction.