“Oh, I don’t know, Bert. I think the place looks mighty swell with all your pictures and truck around. The carpet isn’t much, as you say, but then that’s all the better; you won’t have to be careful about spilling things on it. And maybe What’s-his-name will turn out all right.”
“A regular farmer, I’ll bet! They live in Davis City, Ohio, and I never heard of the place before. He’s been going to some sort of a two-cent academy out there, and now he’s got it into his head that he can enter the third class here. If he makes the second he’ll be doing well.”
“That’s what dad says; says he was captain of his team last year. I can just see the team, can’t you? And I dare say he’ll expect me to get him a place on the eleven here; maybe he expects to be captain again!”
“Oh, well,” said Harry, smiling at his friend’s woe-begone countenance, “perhaps it won’t be as bad as that. And if he’s played football at all we ought to be glad to get him. We haven’t so much new material in sight this fall that we can afford to be particular. I really think, though, you ought to have gone to the station to meet him, Bert.”
“I was busy putting up pictures,” answered Bert grumpily. “If he can’t find his way from the station up here he’d better go back where he came from.”
“I can see where little--say, what the dickens _is_ his name, anyway?”
“Where’d he get it? Well, I can see where he’s going to have the time of his young life when he gets here; you’re so sweet-tempered, old man!” And Harry Folsom leaned back among the pillows of the window seat and laughed. Bert, sprawling in a dilapidated Morris chair, observed him gloomily.
What he saw was a rather plain-looking lad of seventeen, of medium height and weight, with light hair and gray eyes and an expression of good nature that was seldom absent. Bert had never seen Harry angry; in fact, his good nature was proverbial throughout Beechcroft Academy. He was manager of the football team, and was just the fellow for the office. He possessed a good deal of executive ability, a fair share of common sense, and a faculty for keeping his head and his temper under the greatest provocation.
He differed widely in that respect from his host. Bert Middleton had a temper, and anyone who was with him for any length of time was pretty certain to find it out. Unfortunately, with the temper went a stubbornness that made matters worse.