ROOM-MATES
The appearance of the study seemed to have been changed in his absence,
and Dick’s second glance showed that the change was in the shape of
several pictures on the wall, some books on one of the study tables
and a large packing case in the centre of the floor from which emerged
the corner of a brilliant blue cushion and the lower half of a boy.
While Dick looked the rest of the youth emerged slowly until at last,
somewhat flushed of face, he stood entirely revealed, clutching
triumphantly a pair of battered running shoes. At that moment his
eyes fell on Dick and a surprised and very pleasant smile came to his
face. He tossed the shoes to the floor, dusted his hands by a simple
expedient of rubbing them on his trousers, and nodded, stepping around
a corner of the big box.
“Hello!” he said. “I suppose you’re Bates. My name’s Gard.”
He held out a hand and Dick took it as he answered: “Yes. Glad to meet
you. We’re in here together, I take it.”
Gard nodded. “Yes. I got here this noon and helped myself to a desk,
but I’m not particular which I have. Same about the beds. We can toss
up, if you like.”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” Dick replied. “Suppose you take the first
choice of a desk and I’ll take the bed I want. That suit?”
“Sure.” Gard was looking at Dick with frank interest, leaning against
the packing case, his arms, on which he had rolled up the sleeves of a
good-looking shirt, folded. “Yes, that’s fair enough. I took that desk
because it happened to be nearest the box, and I’ll keep it.”
Dick laid his hat down and seated himself on the window-seat.
“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” he said, looking about the
study.
“Oh, big enough, isn’t it? It is one of the small ones, though. Some
of the rooms on the front are corkers, Bates. I couldn’t afford one of
those, though, and this is a lot better than the room I had last year
in Goss.”
“Then you--you’re not a new fellow?”
Gard shook his head. “This is my second year. I’m in the Third Class.
Are you?”
“Yes. I think I could have passed for the Fourth, but I guess I’d had
to work mighty hard to keep up, and I want to play football, you see.
So----”
“Of course! There’s no sense rushing through things too much, Bates. If
you’d gone into the Fourth you’d have been through just when you were
beginning to like the school. You will like it, I’m sure.”
“I expect to. I had a brother here five or six years ago, and he’s
always cracked it up high.”
“That so?” Gard pulled the blue cushion from the box and tossed it
across the room. “Put that behind you. Guess I’ll leave the rest of
this truck until after supper.” He seated himself in one of the easy
chairs and stretched a pair of rather long legs across the carpet.
“Let’s get acquainted,” he added, smiling.
Dick liked that smile and answered it. But for a moment neither
followed the suggestion. Gard was looking critically at the pictures he
had hung, and Dick had a good chance to size him up. His room-mate was
a bit taller than Dick, with rather a loose-jointed way of moving. He
didn’t look exactly thin, but there certainly wasn’t any excess flesh
about him. The running shoes suggested that he was a track athlete, and
Dick surmised that he was a good one. You couldn’t call Gard handsome;
perhaps he wasn’t even good-looking in the general acceptance of the
word; but Dick liked his face none the less. The forehead was high and
the lightish hair of a rather indeterminate shade of brown was brushed
straight back from it. That happened to be a style of wearing the hair
that Dick had always objected to, but he had to own that the fashion
suited Gard very well. It emphasised the lean length of the face and
added to the sharp, hawk-like appearance produced by a curved beak of
a nose, thin and pointed, and the narrow jaws. But if Gard reminded
Dick of a hawk, it was a gentle and kindly one, for the mouth was
good-natured and the eyes, darkly grey, were soft and honest. Gard wore
good clothes with no suggestion of extravagance. In age he was fully
seventeen, perhaps a year more. He moved his gaze from the wall and it
met Dick’s. Involuntarily both boys smiled. Then each began to speak at
once, stopped simultaneously and laughed.
“You say it,” said Gard.
“I was going to ask if you were a runner.”
“I’m a hurdler. I’ve tried the sprints, but I’m only as good as a dozen
others. Sometimes I ‘double’ in the broad-jump if we need the points.
You look as if you might be fast on the track, Bates. By the way,
what’s the rest of your name?”
“Richard C. The C’s for Corliss.”
“That means Dick, doesn’t it?”
“Surely,” laughed the other.
“All right. Mine’s Stanley; usually abbreviated to Stan. Have you ever
done any running, Dick?”
“Yes, I’ve done some sprinting. What’s the hundred-yards record here?”
“A fifth. It hasn’t been bettered in years.”
“That’s a fifth better than I can do.”
“Same here. I tried often enough, too, but I only did it once, and that
was in practice, with a hard wind at my back. You play football, you
said?”
“Yes, do you?”
Stanley shook his head. “Too strenuous for me. I like baseball pretty
well, but it interferes with track work. Guess we’re going to have a
corking good eleven this year, and I hope you’ll make it, Dick.”
“Thanks. I may. The fellows look a bit older and bigger than I expected
they would, though.”
“Well, they say you have a good deal of fun on the Second Team, if you
don’t make the first. And next year you’ll probably be a lot heavier.
I don’t know many of the football crowd, or I’d take you around and
introduce you. I wonder if Blash would do you any good.”
“Who is he?”
“Wallace Blashington’s his full name. He plays tackle on the team;
right, I think. He might be a good fellow for you to know if----”
Stanley’s voice trailed into silence.
“If what?” prompted Dick.
“Well, Blash is a queer customer. He’s really a corking chap, but
doesn’t take to many fellows. That’s no insult to you, Dick. He--he’s
just funny that way. And he’s the sort that won’t do a thing if he
thinks you’re trying to pull his leg. Blash hated me--well, no, he
didn’t hate me; he didn’t take the trouble to do that; but he certainly
had no use for me the first of last year. We get along all right now,
though.”
“What happened? To make him change his mind, I mean.”
“That was sort of funny.” Stanley smiled reminiscently. “We had some
scrub skating races last winter on the river and Blash and I were
entered in the two-mile event. There were about twenty starters
altogether, but we had them shaken at the beginning of the last lap
and Blash and I hung on to each other all the way up the river to the
finish. I just managed to nose him out at the line, and he was a bit
peeved, I guess. He didn’t let on, but he was. So, a little while
later, when we were watching the other events, he came over where I
was and said: ‘I believe I could beat you another time, Gard.’ ‘Well,
perhaps you could,’ I answered. ‘Maybe you’ll have a chance to find
out.’ I wasn’t cross, but I thought it was a bit unnecessary, if you
see what I mean. ‘Wouldn’t care to try it now, I suppose?’ he said.
I told him I was tired out, but I’d race him if he liked as soon as
the programme was finished. ‘Oh, never mind the rest of it,’ he said.
‘We’re both through. Say we skate down the river a ways and settle the
question by ourselves.’ So we did. We went about a mile down, beyond
the flag, and Blash said we’d skate a mile down and a mile back, and
that we’d turn at the old coal wharf. So we went off together, Blash
trying to make me set the pace. But I wouldn’t and so we lagged along
abreast for half a mile or so. Then Blash laughed and spurted and I
went after him and we had it nip and tuck all the way to the wharf.
Coming back there was a wind blowing down on us and we had harder work.
Blash was a half-dozen yards ahead and when we came to a turn in the
river he stayed along the bank, thinking he’d be more out of the wind.
That seemed good sense and I hugged in close behind him. Then, first
thing I knew, the ice went crack, and down went Blash. I managed to
swerve out and get by, but of course I had to go back and see if he was
all right.
“He was about ten feet from shore, flapping around in a little squarish
hole he’d made for himself. I asked him if he could break the ice and
get ashore and he said he couldn’t, that it was too thick to break with
his hands. So I laid down on the ice and crawled over to him, and he
got hold of my hands and I had him pretty nearly out when the crazy
ice broke again and we were both in there! In fact, I went down so far
that I came up under the ice and Blash had to pull me out to the hole.
By that time we were both laughing so we could hardly keep our heads
out. The water was just over our depth and the ice was too hard to
break with our hands, and we didn’t have anything else until I thought
of using a skate. That meant getting boot and all off, and Blash sort
of held me up while I tried to untie the laces and everything. We were
getting pretty stiff with the cold by then, Blash especially, but I
finally managed to get one boot off and began hacking at the ice with
the skate blade. It was slow work until I had chopped off about a yard.
Then we got our toes on the bottom and after that it was easy and we
crawled out. I wanted to beat it back to school as fast as I could, but
Blash said that we’d catch cold and have pneumonia and die. He said the
best thing to do was light a fire. Of course, I thought he was joking,
but he pulled out one of those patent water-proof match-safes and if
you’ll believe it the matches were perfectly dry!
“But the awful thing was that there were only two matches there!
However, we got a lot of wood together and some dry marsh grass and
twigs, and all this and that, and I kept the wind off, and we made the
second match do the trick. In about two minutes we had a dandy hot fire
going, took off our outer things and hung them around and we sat there
with our backs to the mud bank and steamed. I don’t believe any fire
ever felt as good as that one did, Dick! Well, that’s all of it. Just
before dark, we started back and we never told anyone about falling
into the river for months afterwards. We never found out which is the
best two-mile skater, but we did a lot of chinning and got to know each
other, and since then Blash and I have been quite pally.”
“Quite an adventure,” said Dick. “It’s a wonder you didn’t catch cold,
though.”
Stanley laughed. “We did! For a week we were both sneezing and
snuffling horribly. Tell you what, Dick. If you haven’t got anything
better to do, we might go over and see Blash after supper. I guess this
truck can wait until tomorrow. Only don’t say anything about football
to him. If you do he will think I brought you over on purpose, so as
to--well, you see what I mean.”
“Yes, I see. He might think I was swiping,” Dick laughed. “But, look
here, Stan, what could he do, anyway? A fellow has got to make his own
way, hasn’t he?”
“Why, yes, I suppose so. But it does help--somehow--to know the crowd
if you’re going in for football. At least, it does with making the
track team. I don’t mean that there’s favouritism, but--oh, I suppose
if you happen to know a fellow and know that he’s all right, you just
naturally take a bit more interest in him. That’s the way I figure it
out, anyway.”
“Yes, but suppose this fellow Blash--er----”
“Blashington. Quite a mouthful, isn’t it?”
“Suppose he asks me if I play football? Then what?”
“Oh, just say you do and change the subject. By Jupiter, Dick, it’s ten
after six! Let’s beat it over and get some supper. Say, if you see the
steward tonight maybe you can get at my table, if you’d like to. Tell
him you’ve got friends there. It’s Number 9. You can sit there tonight,
anyway, for Eaton’s not back yet, and you can have his place. Know
where the lavatory is? Got any towels? Here, take one of mine. Your
trunk won’t get up until morning, probably. They have so many of them
that they can’t begin to handle them all today. If you need anything
let me know and I’ll dig it out of the box for you.”
“I’ve got everything I want in my bag, I think. Much obliged just the
same, Stan.”
Five minutes later the new friends closed the door of Number 14 and
made their way along The Front, as the brick walk leading from side to
side of the campus was called. Stanley named the buildings for Dick as
they went along: the gymnasium, then Goss Hall, Parkinson, Williams
and Alumni. Their journey ended there, but there was still another
dormitory nearby, Leonard, and, beyond that, the residence of the
Principal. Dick nodded, but it was food he was thinking of just then.