“I’m always stuck on the trig. If I didn’t love machinery so well, I’d think I’d made the mistake of my life in coming to Sheddon. Yet the High School Math. didn’t bother me so much.”
“Pull up your chair and let’s have a crack at it,” said Larry. “I looked it over just after supper, and it isn’t so awfully rocky, this time.”
With the trigonometry lesson but fairly begun, another of the lame ones dropped in; then a third and fourth. Larry didn’t “baby” the mental mendicants――not any; on the contrary, with the exception of little Purdick, he was gruffly sarcastic with them, calling them cripples, and demanding to know how long it was going to be before they’d throw the crutches away. It was the wise thing to do, but Larry didn’t do it because he was wise; it was chiefly impatience with a bunch of fellows the majority of whom hadn’t made the most of their preparatory advantages while they had them.
Purdick, the first to come, was the last to go. After the others had dropped out one by one, he told Larry why he was lingering.
“You’ve been rattling good to me, Donovan, and there’s something I ought to tell you,” was the way he began the thing that had to be said.
“This fellow Underhill, in your section; you had a racket with him after the foot-ball game with Rockford Poly, didn’t you?”
“Not much of a racket. He was standing, with a bunch of his own kind, on the gym. steps as I came from the showers, and was busy black-listing the coach for having put me in: said it was a disgrace to Sheddon to use a ‘mucker’ on the ’Varsity, and then chucked in some things about my home folks that I don’t take from anybody.”
“No; I tried it, but the others got between. Then I guess I did a fool thing. Underhill’s father is the head of a firm of railroad contractors. A couple of years back this firm had a job on our home railroad, and it did so much crooked work that the contract had to be cancelled. Dick told me about this one day when Underhill had gone out of his way to cold-shoulder me.”
Larry nodded. “I was hot, and didn’t have any better sense.”
Little Purdick wriggled uneasily in his chair.
“It’s snitching, in a way, I suppose, but I’ve got to tell you, Donnie. Underhill and his bunch eat at the restaurant, pretty often. They talk before me just as if I wasn’t there――as I guess they would before any ‘menial.’ Underhill’s got it in for you. I overheard him tell the other fellows of his crowd that he was going to make Sheddon too hot to hold you; he said the university wasn’t big enough to hold you and him at the same time.”