Harmon looked the least bit surprised, but he answered unhesitatingly. “My brother was going to Kenly,” he explained. “Then he decided he’d quit school and join the Navy. So I just thought I might as well go where he’d started for. Guess that was the way it happened. I don’t really know much about the place. Dare say, if I’d heard of your school first I’d have gone there.”
“Gee, I wish you had!” said Joe in heartfelt tones.
Harmon viewed him bewilderedly. Then he laughed with a suggestion of embarrassment. “Thanks,” he murmured. “Guess your school isn’t missing much, though.” He turned his gaze and busied himself with getting his ticket ready for the conductor. Bob, opposite, viewed him with flattering attention. He saw a boy of apparently seventeen years, well if not heavily built, with clean-cut features, quiet gray-blue eyes and brown hair. He was not particularly good-looking, but his somewhat serious and self-confident expression would have brought a second glance from anyone. Then, too, when he smiled he looked very likable. Bob’s thought was, as he turned his gaze away: “Thinks well of himself, but doesn’t put on any airs. Doesn’t do much talking, but thinks a lot. Looks like he’d be mighty shifty on his feet and pretty hard to stop if he once got started.”
When the conductor had taken their tickets and gone on, Bob said: “I suppose you’ll be going out for the Kenly team, Harmon.”
“I think I’ll have to try for it, but I guess I won’t stand much of a show.” Harmon smiled deprecatingly.
Bob frowned slightly. It was all right, he reflected, to be modest, but there was no sense in being a humbug! Joe laughed. “Oh, I dare say you’ll get by,” he said, faintly ironic. After a moment he added lightly: “If they turn you down, come over to us. I’ll promise you a place!”
Harmon smiled politely, and Bob leaned across to him. “Better take him up, Harmon,” he said. “Joe’s our captain, you know.”
Harmon looked with slightly more interest at Joe. “Really?” he asked. “I’ll have to remember your offer then.” But the joking tone in his voice indicated that he wasn’t taking the suggestion very seriously. While his head was turned, Bob surreptitiously reversed the leather tag that hung from the handle of the kit-bag at his feet. Behind the little celluloid window the named stared out distinctly: