NEW QUARTERS
At eight o’clock that evening, having reached Wissining only a little
more than an hour late and done full justice to supper, Toby and
Arnold were busily unpacking and setting things to rights in Number 12
Whitson, which, as those who know Yardley Hall School will remember, is
the granite dormitory building facing southward, flanked on the west by
the equally venerable Oxford Hall and on the east by the more modern
Clarke. There were those who liked the old-time atmosphere of Whitson;
its wooden stairways, its low ceilings, its deep window embrasures and
wide seats; who even forgave many a lack of convenience for the sake
of the somewhat dingy home-likeness. Perhaps, too, they liked to feel
themselves heirs to the legends and associations that clustered about
the building. On the other hand, there were scoffers dwelling more
luxuriously in Clarke or Dudley or Merle who declared that the true
reason for Whitson’s popularity was that the dining hall, known at
Yardley as Commons, occupied the lower floor and that fellows living in
the building consequently enjoyed an advantage over those dwelling in
the other dormitories.
Not all the Whitson rooms were desirable, however. On the third floor,
for instance, was one that Toby, when he looked about the comparative
grandeur of Number 12, remembered without regrets. He had passed last
year under its sloping roof in an atmosphere of benzine and cooking.
The benzine odor was due to the fact that he had conducted a fairly
remunerative business in cleaning and pressing clothes, the smell of
cooking to the fact that the room’s one window was directly above the
basement kitchen. This year the atmosphere promised to be sweeter, for
Number 12 was on the front of the building, away from the kitchen, and
Toby had retired from business.
There were moments when he viewed his retirement with alarm, for,
although his father had assured him that sufficient money would be
forthcoming to meet expenses if Toby managed carefully, he couldn’t
quite forget that, should anything interrupt the prosperity of the
boat-building business at home, there would be nothing to fall back
on. But Arnold had made the abandoning of the cleaning and pressing
industry a condition of his invitation to a share of Number 12.
“Homer’s not coming back, Toby,” he had announced in August. (Homer
Wilkins had been Arnold’s roommate the preceding year.) “I wish you’d
come down to Number 12 with me. It won’t cost you much more than that
cell up in Poverty Row; and that’s an awful dive, anyway. Of course,
you can’t go on with that beastly, smelly clothes-cleaning stunt, but
you weren’t going to anyway, were you? I mean, since your father’s
business has picked up so this spring and summer you won’t have to, eh?”
Frankly, Toby had fully intended to. Being even partly self-supporting
gives one a feeling of independence that one hates to lose. But Toby
said nothing of that. He thought it over and, because he was very fond
of Arnold, as Arnold was of him, and because Number 22 had been pretty
bad at times, he yielded. This evening he was very glad that he had,
as, pausing with a crumpled pair of trousers in his hand midway between
his battered trunk and his closet, he viewed again the quiet comfort
of the big square room. Wilkins had removed a few things, but they
were not missed, and Arnold’s folks were sending down another chair
and a small bookcase from New York for Toby’s use. A fellow ought,
he reflected, to be very happy in such a place; and he felt renewed
gratitude to Arnold for choosing him to share its comforts. Arnold
might easily have picked one of several fellows as a roommate without
surprising Toby: Frank, for instance. Arnold had known Frank longer
than he had known Toby. Reflecting in such fashion, Toby remained
immovable so long that Arnold, who had for the moment abandoned more
important business to put together a new loose-leaf notebook under the
mellow glow of the droplight on the big table, looked across curiously.
“What’s your difficulty, T. Tucker?” he asked. “Gone to sleep on your
feet? Reaction, I suppose, after the near-trainwreck!”
“I was just thinking,” answered Toby slowly, “that this is an awfully
jolly room and that it was mighty good of you to let me come in with
you.”
“Well, the room’s all right. (How in the dickens does this thing
catch?) I like it a heap better than those mission-furnished rooms
in Clarke. Of course, next year I suppose I’ll try for Dudley, with
the rest of the First Class fellows, although I don’t know about
that, either. Maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll stick here. It’s getting a
whole lot like home, Toby. But as for its being good for me to have
you with me here, why, that’s sort of funny, T. Tucker. Guess you’re
not the only one that’s――er――that’s benefited, what? Rather like it
myself, if you must know. Homer and I got on pretty well, all things
considered, but that was mainly because he’s too lazy to quarrel with
you about anything. Personally, Toby, I like a row now and then. It
sort of――clears the atmosphere, so to speak. That’s why I thought of
you. You’ve got such a perfectly beastly disposition and such a rotten
temper that I can have a scrap whenever I feel the need of it. So, you
see, it was pure selfishness, after all, old thing.”
Toby smiled and went over to the closet with his burden. “We started
with a scrap, anyway,” he said. “Remember it, Arn?”
“Perfectly. I intimated that your hair was sort of reddish and you
didn’t like it. So you came at me like a cyclone and we both went into
the harbor. I remember it perfectly. It started because you wanted
twenty-four cents a gallon for some gasoline.”
“Twenty-two. You said you paid only twenty in New York.”
“Anyway, I offered you less than you asked, and you said you’d pump it
out of the tank again, and――――”
“Good thing I didn’t have to try it,” laughed Toby. “That was only a
little over a year ago, Arn! Why, it seems years!”
“Much has happened since then, T. Tucker,” replied Arnold, tossing the
notebook on the table. “Events have transpired. In the short space
of――let me see; this is September――in the short space of fifteen months
you were rescued from a living-death in the Johnstown High School and
became a person of prominence at Yardley Hall!”
“Prominent as a cleaner and presser of clothes,” laughed Toby.
“Nay, nay, prominent as one swell hockey player, Toby, and also, if
I mistake not, as a rescuer of drowning youths. Don’t forget you’re
a hero, old thing. By the way, I wonder if young Lingard’s back. For
your sake, I hope he isn’t. His gratitude to you for saving him from a
watery death was a bit embarrassing to you, I thought!”
Toby smiled ruefully. “You didn’t _think_, you _knew_,” he said grimly.
Arnold laughed.
“To see you slinking around a corner to evade the kid was killing,
Toby! And he is such a little rotter, too! While you were rescuing,
why didn’t you pull out something a little more select?”
“Oh, Tommy isn’t a bad sort really,” responded Toby earnestly. “He――he
just didn’t get the right sort of bringing-up, I suppose.”
“Maybe. Personally, I always feel like taking him over my knee and
wearing out a shingle on him! Well, this won’t get our things unpacked.
Let’s knock off after a bit and see who’s back. Funny none of the gang
has been in. Wonder if Fan’s back. And Ted Halliday.”
“I saw Fanning at supper,” said Toby.
“We’ll run over to Dudley after awhile and look him up. You like him,
don’t you, Toby?”
“Fanning? Yes, but I don’t really know him as well as some of the other
fellows. He’s football captain this year, isn’t he?”
“Yes.” Arnold nodded and then frowned. “Sometimes I wish we’d elected
some one else: Ted, maybe, or Jim Rose.”
“Why? I thought you liked Fanning a lot. And he was the whole thing
last year in the Broadwood game, wasn’t he?”
“I do like him. He’s a mighty fine chap. And he’s a whale of a player.
Only, what sort of a captain will he make? He’s too easy, to my way
of thinking. He’s likely to fall for a lot of fellows who can’t
play much just because they’re friends of his. I don’t mean that he
will intentionally show favoritism, but he’s too plaguy loyal to his
friends, Toby. To tell the truth, I’m half inclined to stay out of
it this fall――No, that isn’t so, either. What I do mean is that I’m
scared that Fan may keep me on even if I don’t really make good. And
I’d hate that worse than poison. I want to make the team, but I don’t
want fellows to wink and laugh and look wise about me. You know the
sort of stuff: ‘Oh, Deering, ye-es, he’s all right. But it’s lucky for
him Fanning’s a friend of his!’ That sort of guff. Of course, this new
coach, Lyle, may be a chap with a mind of his own and not stand for any
of the friend-of-my-youth stuff. I hope so. I’d feel better anyway. By
the way, you haven’t changed your mind, Toby?”
“About football? No.”
“I wish you would. Why don’t you?”
“Lots of reasons,” answered Toby smilingly. “In the first place, I
tried it last fall. In the sec――――”
“You call that trying? You just went out with a whole mob of fellows
and loafed around until they got tired of walking on you. Besides, you
were out for the Second. The First’s a different proposition, son,
especially now that you’ve made good in hockey. Every one knows that
you’ll be hockey captain next year.”
“It’s more than I know,” said Toby good-naturedly. “Anyhow――――”
“And you’re at least fifteen pounds heavier than a year ago. They said
you were too light, didn’t they?”
“They meant in the head,” replied the other gravely.
“They were dead right, too! But, honest, old thing, joking aside――――”
“Arn, I haven’t got time for football and I can’t afford it.”
“That’s what you said about hockey last winter. And you were so pressed
for time that you copped a Ripley Scholarship! As for ‘affording’ it,
where’s the expense come in?”
“Togs and things,” answered Toby. “And traveling expenses. Arn, if
I went in for football and made the team――which I couldn’t do in a
million years――I’d have to go back to sponging coats and pressing
trousers, and that would make the room awfully smelly, and you wouldn’t
like it a bit.” And Toby ended with a laugh.
“Piffle! All right, have your own stubborn way. You’ll miss a whole lot
of fun, though.”
“And a whole lot of bruises! Anyway, Arn, one football hero is enough
in a family. I’ll stay at home and cut surgeon’s plaster for you and
keep your crutches handy and hear your alibis.”
“Idiot,” said Arnold. “Come on, dump that truck on the chair and let’s
go over to Dudley. I want to hear some sensible conversation for a
change.”
“You don’t mean you’re going to keep quiet all evening, do you?” asked
Toby with concern.