“It’ll grow out in three or four weeks and I can cut it to the right color,” said the barber, with doubtful comfort. “People won’t notice it now till they git pretty clost.”
And herewith came an unforeseen break in the Peck solidarity. Donald declined absolutely to have his own hair cut and dyed to match; the weather was too cold and the bull’s-eye effect too conspicuous. Duncan must either grow hair or get a wig. All of which Duncan considered very unbrotherly and unfeeling. And Tompkins, having proved himself a dog that could bite as well as bark, was baited no longer.
Meantime Wolcott, having given up the society of Marchmont, was seeing more of others whom in his intimacy with the polished New Yorker he had neglected. There was no one of these whom he liked better to visit than Poole, partly because of the attractive personality of Poole himself, partly because of the pleasant company who habitually gathered in his study. Planter and Ware he often met there, while Durand, Morgan, Tompkins, Richardson of the _Seatonian_ board, and Saybrook who drew the funny caricatures, also belonged to the set. Laughlin was made welcome as often as his many occupations would permit. With his different experience of life and greater seriousness, he was not an adept at the gay banter current among care-free fellows to whom the pleasant things of life came without effort. His presence, however, was never a damper on the merriment, while in the discussion of graver matters his opinion always carried weight. With Wolcott he talked chiefly about football, with the result that the interest and ambition of the new boy were constantly growing.
It was on the last evening before the school recess that Wolcott was publicly committed to the captain’s projects. A group of kindred spirits had gathered in Poole’s room, talking athletics as vigorously as if the subject had not been fundamentally discussed a hundred times before.
“The outlook is certainly bad,” Planter was saying. “The football is gone, and while we don’t want to think that we are going to lose the baseball too, the chances are certainly against us, and we haven’t any great show for track. If Dickinson and Todd and all those fellows could only tie Hillbury last year, I don’t see what we can expect with a green team. This looks like a mighty bad year for us, doesn’t it?”