Half an hour later, having left his new roommate to the business of unpacking his trunk, Bert was in Number 12, and he and Nick and Guy Murtha, their host, were talking it over.
“We saw him on the train just after we left the city,” Guy was saying. “Some of us had been in the diner and when we came back through the parlor car we saw this chap and the man with him. They had a table and the kid was eating a lunch out of a box and the chap in the derby hat was waiting on him, or, anyway, that’s how it looked. He’d take a sandwich out of the box and put it on the kid’s plate and then he’d move the mustard nearer and sort of fuss over the table. He wasn’t eating a thing himself. I suppose he ate at second table!”
Guy was a tall fellow of eighteen, a senior and captain of the nine. He was not a handsome youth; rather plain, in fact; but he had so many likable qualities that one soon forgot that his nose was short and broad, that his heavy eyebrows met above it, that his mouth was large and somewhat loose and that his pale eyes, of a washed-out blue, were too small. He had a jolly laugh and a pleasant, deep voice that won friends.
Nick chuckled. “When they got off at the Junction the man got confused and tried to get back on the express again, and your friend stood in the middle of the platform, with his hands in his pockets, and shouted: ‘Bowles, you silly ass, came back here!’ Everyone laughed like the dickens.”
“He’s English,” said Bert dismally.
“Bowles? Rawther!”
“Ordway, too. I asked him. He was born in England; I forget where; is there a place called Pants?”
“Not in England, dear boy,” remonstrated Nick. “It would be Trousers.”
“Hants, you mean,” said Guy. “Somewhere in the south of England.”
“That’s it, Hants. His father is English, he says, and his mother American. They live in Maryland now.”
“Nice-looking chap,” said Guy.
Bert nodded. “Yes,” he agreed doubtfully. “Yes, he’s a nice-looking kid, but——” His voice dwindled to silence. Nick laughed.
“Cheer up, old scout! He can’t be awfully British if he has an American mama and lives in ‘Maryland, my Maryland.’ Bet you the sodas he will be singing ‘Dixie’ when you get back!”
“More likely ‘Rule Britannia’ or ‘God Save the King,’” replied Bert ruefully. After a moment: “He’s got awfully smooth manners,” he added grudgingly. “Makes me feel like a—an Indian.”
“Wish he might have kept Bowles here with him,” said Nick regretfully. “It would have given Lothrop a lot of class!”
“I liked what I saw of him,” said Guy, “and I guess you’ll take to him when you know him better, Bert. Anyway, he’s a gentleman. You might have been saddled with a regular mucker, you know. We get one now and then.”
“Stop looking at me,” said Nick.
“Oh, he’s a gentleman, all right,” laughed Bert. “That’s the trouble. I’ve got to live up to him, don’t you see? I dare say he will put on a dinner jacket and stuff his handkerchief up his sleeve. He makes me feel like an awfully rough, uncivilized sort of fellow.”
“Does he wear a wrist watch?” asked Nick.
“No, he has it on a fob. And, say, fellows, if you want to see some swell things, come up and give his dresser the once-over! Solid silver everything! Crest, too. Oh, we’re going to be pretty classy in 29 this year, I can tell you!” And Bert sighed.
“I’ll have to look up my crest,” observed Nick thoughtfully.
“Your crest!” jeered Bert.
“That’s what I said. I’ve got a peachy one. Dad had someone make it for him and put it on the automobile doors. It was the proper caper that year to have your crest on your auto, and Dad doesn’t let anyone put anything over on him. I told him I thought a cake of soap, rampant, surrounded by the motto, ‘Won’t dry the skin,’ would be rather appropriate, but he didn’t like it. Dad makes soap, you know.”
“Yes, I do know,” replied Guy. “I tried some of it once. And it didn’t dry the skin, either. It took it off.”
“Well, you’re not supposed to wash your hands with laundry soap,” said Nick. “Of course, if you’re used to that sort, though, and don’t know any better——”
“I suppose,” said Guy gravely, “you’ll have to sort of look after Ordway, Bert, now that he hasn’t any valet; lay out his things in the morning, you know, and put his studs in, and all that.”
“Fine!” approved Nick. “Maybe he will give you a tip now and then. Say, did you pipe the gray suede gloves he wore? Think of gloves on a day like this! Still, noblesse oblige, eh, what?”
“I noticed the stunning Norfolk suit he wore,” said Guy. “I’ll bet that wasn’t cut out by any village tailor down in Maryland.”
“Rawther not!” drawled Nick. “I fawncy he goes across every year and gets togged out in Bond Street. What ho, old top!”
“Well, I guess I’ll go back and pilot him down to supper,” said Bert. “Mind if I bring him down here afterwards, Guy? Or, say, you fellows come up, will you? I—I sort of funk the job of talking up to his level all evening!”
“You bet we’ll come,” agreed Nick. “I want to meet him. Something tells me that he and I have a lot of mutual acquaintances amongst royalty in dear old England.”
“Well, don’t come up there and act the fool,” warned Bert. “He’s new yet and not used to our simple, democratic ways.”
“Oh, I won’t shock him,” chuckled Nick. “Nothing like that, dear boy, ’pon honor. You’ll see that he and I will get along like a house on fire. Say, what’s his front name, the one you take hold by?”
“Hugh,” answered Bert from the doorway, “Hugh Brodwick Ordway. Some name, what?”
“Rawther!”
“Cut it,” laughed Guy, “or we’ll all be talking that way! I feel it coming on. We’ll come up after supper, Bert, and help you entertain, although when I’m going to get my things unpacked——”
“I’ll help you, Guy,” Nick volunteered. “I’m a remarkable little unpacker. A misplace for everything and everything misplaced, is my motto. Bye-bye, Bert. Give my love to Broadway—I should say Ordway. Tell him I’ll be around later and cheer him up!”
Hugh Ordway was not, however, singing either ‘Dixie’ or anything else when Bert got back to Number 29. He was sitting at the window, attired principally in a bathrobe, gazing a trifle disconsolately, or so Bert thought, out over the campus. He turned as Bert entered.
“I say, Winslow, what about a bath?” he asked. “Is there a tub on this floor?”
“Yes, but it’s five minutes to supper time, Ordway. You’d better leave it till afterwards.”
The other reflected. “Very well,” he said. “And, another thing.” He hesitated. “Do I put on—er—do I dress, you know?”
“Well, I wouldn’t go down in that thing,” said Bert gravely.
“No, but just regular things, eh? You see, I really don’t know much about American prep schools. I dare say I’ll make an awful ass of myself,” he added ruefully.
“Wear whatever you like. Sweaters are the only things barred. I’ll wait for you and show you the way.”
“Thanks,” was the grateful reply. “That’s decent of you. I won’t be a minute.” He disappeared into the bedroom and, judging from the sounds, managed a very good substitute for that prohibited bath. Still, although he wasn’t back in a minute, Bert didn’t have long to wait. Ordway returned in a blue serge suit and patent leather shoes. He was certainly, thought Bert, a mighty good-looking chap; straight, well formed, with a clear, fair complexion, nice brown eyes and hair of the same color. His nose was a bit aquiline and his chin was at once round and strong looking. Bert, studying him as he paused to make certain that he had placed a handkerchief in his pocket, decided that he was far more American than English in appearance, whatever his character might prove.
Bert moved to the door, while Ordway was securing the missing article of attire, and pulled it open. “All right?” he asked.
“Yes, thanks.”
Bert unconsciously stepped aside for the other to pass out first. Afterwards, going down the stairs, he was angry with himself for having done so.
“I’m just as good as he is, for all his airs,” he told himself, “and I’m the older, too.”
The big dining hall which ran across the north end of the building and accommodated one hundred students and faculty members at its fourteen tables, was well filled when they entered. Bert led Ordway toward the table at the far end of the room at which he had sat last term only to find that, in the confusion incident to the beginning of school, all the seats there had been taken. There were not two empty chairs together anywhere near by and, in the end, Bert and Ordway were obliged to sit at separate tables, the latter, as Bert saw, being sandwiched in between Pop Driver and a lower middle boy named Keller. Bert’s own seat placed him amongst fellows whom he knew only well enough to speak to, and he was frankly bored and left the room as soon as he had satisfied a not enthusiastic hunger. Ordway, however, was still at table when Bert went out, and the latter, desiring to accept Nate Leddy’s invitation to go canoeing, nevertheless listened to the voice of duty and waited in the corridor for his friend’s appearance. Ordway came out finally and Bert suggested that they take a stroll around the grounds.
“Did you get enough feed?” he asked politely.
“Yes, thanks. Awfully good chow, too, I think.”
“Chow?” asked Bert.
“Food, I meant. I say, Winslow, I wish you’d help me break myself of using—er—English expressions like that, you know. I want to talk like the rest of you chaps. Of course, I know a lot of American slang now, but I don’t seem to always get it in right, someway. Now what do you say for ‘chow’?”
“‘Eats,’ I guess,” laughed Bert. “You’ll be talking like the rest of us quick enough. Don’t worry. Besides, what’s it matter?”
“Well, a chap doesn’t like to seem different, if you know what I mean. And, anyway, I’m as much American as English.”
“You’re not if you were born in England.”
“Oh, I say, Winslow, a chap can’t control that! I might have been born in France, you know. Fact is, I came rather near it! But that wouldn’t have made me a Frenchie, eh?”
“No, but your father’s English and you were born in England. That makes you a British citizen, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, yes, but——” He paused. Then, confidentially: “Fact is, Winslow, I’m awfully fond of this country, don’t you know, and as long as I’m going to be here at Grafton two years I’d like to—to be like the rest of you, if you know what I mean. Of course, I am English. There’s no getting around that. But my mother’s American as anything. Her family has lived in Maryland for a hundred and fifty years, I think it is, and I always consider myself about half American, too. On the other side, now, they’re always taking me for a Yankee.”
Bert laughed. “They might on the other side, but they wouldn’t here, Ordway! This is School Hall. The recitation rooms and offices are on the first two floors. On the third floor there’s the assembly room where you attend chapel in the morning and hear lectures and things. On the floor above are the clubrooms: The Forum, the Literary, the Glee, and the Banjo and Mandolin. And the Campus, the monthly paper, has its rooms there, too. The building beyond is Manning. That’s where the juniors live. It’s about like Lothrop, only it has ten more rooms.”
“The juniors live by themselves, eh? How young are they?”
“Oh, we have ’em as young as twelve now and then, but that’s unusual. They’re thirteen and fourteen, mostly. The rooms downstairs on this end are Jules’s. That’s Mr. Teschner, French and German instructor. He and Mrs. Teschner have four rooms there, separate from the rest of the hall. Then Mrs. Prouty, the matron, lives on the floor above, just over them. ‘Mother Prouty,’ the fellows call her. Mr. Gring is on that floor, and Mr. Sargent on the floor above. They call Gring ‘Cupid’ and Sargent ‘Pete.’ All the faculty have pet names. Doctor Duncan—that’s his cottage there behind the trees—is ‘Charlie.’ Then there’s ‘Nell’; you’ll have him in math; his name is Nellis; and Mr. Smiley is called ‘Smiles,’ and Mr. Gibbs is ‘Gusty,’ and Mr. Rumford is ‘Jimmy,’ and Mr. Russell is ‘J. P.,’ and so on.”
“I’ll have to learn them, won’t I?” asked Ordway soberly. “That’s the gymnasium there, isn’t it? I fancy it isn’t open, eh?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“I had a lot of fun in the summer looking at the catalogue and wondering what things would really be like. You know, you Americans have——”
“‘You Americans’?” asked Bert quizzically.
Ordway laughed and colored. “I mean, we Americans have a way of laying it on a bit thick, if you know what I mean. Can’t always believe all you read in the advertisements, you know. That’s why I fancied this place might not be quite up to specifications. It is, though. Everything’s just about the way the catalogue gives it.”
“I guess so. Let’s go back to the room. That’s about all there is to see. Except Morris and Fuller over there. The two white houses at the corner. They’re dormitories, too. Morris has twelve fellows and Fuller eight. Some chaps like them, but I never thought I’d care for them. It’s getting a lot cooler, isn’t it?”
“Yes, the breeze is bully. You’d say ‘bully,’ wouldn’t you?” he added doubtfully.
“I guess so,” laughed Bert. “Or ‘great,’ or ‘fine and dandy.’ What would you say?”
“Oh,” replied the other vaguely, “we might say it was ‘ripping,’ or ‘topping,’ or ‘a little bit of all right.’ ‘Bully’ wasn’t the word I meant, though. It was——” He hesitated. Then, “Corking!” he exclaimed triumphantly. “That’s the word!”
“You’ll do,” Bert laughed. “Come on up.”