with yellow stripes or purple with pink daisies, only, having been told that grey-and-yellow suited him wonderfully he accepted it as a fact, said that it “looked all right, he supposed,” and was soon a willing slave to the grey-and-yellow habit. Mrs. Foster’s attempt to persuade her husband to pin his taste to brown-and-lilac, however, was a wretched failure. Mr. Foster snorted disgustedly and went right on buying green and magenta neckties and socks that made his wife shudder.
Having washed his hands and face and dried them on a handkerchief – a soft, pure-linen affair with a monogram worked in one corner in grey and yellow – Myron opened his kit-bag and unpacked, stowing the things neatly and systematically in one of the chiffoniers. He would, he reflected, get them to take the other chiffonier and the other bed out. As he was to occupy Number 17 alone there was no need of them. When the bag was unpacked and set in a corner of the closet he donned his jacket again and strolled to a window. The campus was livening up. Although the foliage hid the other buildings very effectually he could hear the patter of feet on gravel and steps, voices in shouts or laughter and, from somewhere, the tuning of a banjo. As he looked down, leaning from the sill, two lads came across the grass and paused a little further along under a window. They were in flannels, and one carried a racket. They tilted their heads and hailed:
“O Jimmy! Jimmy Lynde! He-e-ey, Jimmy! Jimmy-y-y!”
After a moment a voice answered from a neighbouring window: “Hello, Gus, you old rascal! ’Lo, Petey! How’s everything?”
“Lovely. Come and have a game. Channing’s over there, and he and Pete’ll play you and me. Huh? Oh, forget it! There’s oodles of time for that. All right, hustle along. We’ll go on over. Get a move on!”
The two waved and turned toward the gymnasium. Myron felt a trifle lonesome when they had gone, for it came to him that he was a stranger in a strange land. He wondered how long it would be before fellows stopped under his window and called to him. It probably didn’t take long to get acquainted, he decided, but still he sort of wished he knew at least one of his school-fellows as a starter. Perhaps, after all, it would have been nicer to have had a room-mate. Personally, he hadn’t cared much one way or the other, but his mother had exclaimed in horror at the idea of his sharing his room with a strange boy. “Why, you can’t tell what sort of a person he might be, Myron dear,” she had protested. “Of course we know that Parkinson is one of the nicest schools and that some of the very best people send their sons there, but nowadays it’s quite impossible to keep the wrong sort out of anywhere. It would be awful if you found yourself with some dreadful low kind of boy.” So Myron had said, “Oh, all right, Mater,” and dismissed the notion. And maybe she was right, too, for it would be a frightful bore to have to live in such close quarters with some “roughneck.” On the whole he guessed he was better off alone, even if he did feel rather lonely for a few days.
He recalled the fact that he hadn’t yet registered at the Office, or wherever you did register, but he had until six to do that, and a glance at a handsome thin-case gold watch showed that the time was still short of three. But it was dull up here, and stuffy, too, and he guessed he’d go down and look the place over. As he turned from his window he became aware of the fact that the dormitory was no longer quiet. Doors opened and closed, feet shuffled on the stairs and there were sounds of talking and singing and whistling. It certainly sounded more cheerful, he thought. The taxi driver had closed the door behind him, and now Myron started across the study to open it. Maybe if it was open some one might see him and drop in. He put his hat back on the table, deciding not to go out just yet. As he reached his hand toward the doorknob there were sounds of heavy footsteps outside. Then something thumped against the door, a voice muttered —
Myron pulled the portal open. Framed in the doorway stood a veritable giant of a boy, a battered valise in each hand, a ragged-edged stiff straw hat tilted far back from his perspiring countenance and a none too clean handkerchief dangling from inside a wilted collar.
“Atta boy!” said the stranger genially, and then, to Myron’s amazement, he piled into the study, fairly sweeping the other aside, dropped his bags with mighty thuds on the floor and mopped his broad face with the dangling handkerchief. “Geewhillikins, but that’s some tote, kiddo!” he observed with an all-encompassing grin. “I’m sweating like a horse!”
“It is warm,” replied Myron in a voice that was quite otherwise. “But haven’t you – er – made a mistake?”
“Watyer mean, mistake?” asked the other, puzzled.
“In the room. This is seventeen.”
“Sure! That’s all right. I just came from the Office. That Hoyt guy said seventeen. And, say, kiddo, it’s some swell dive, ain’t it? Guess you and I are lucky guys, all right, to get it, eh?”
CHAPTER II
SO DOES JOE DOBBINS
Myron didn’t know who “that Hoyt guy” might be, but he was sure that he or some one else had made a horrible mistake. Why, this big, good-natured, badly-dressed boy was the roughest sort of a “roughneck,” the identical type, doubtless, that his mother had spoken of so distastefully! Myron viewed him during a moment of silence, at a loss for words. The newcomer had removed his tattered hat and was now struggling with a jacket that, far too tight in the sleeves, parted reluctantly from the moist garments beneath. But it came off finally and the boy tossed it carelessly to a chair and stretched a pair of long arms luxuriously ere he sank onto it. “That train was like a furnace all the way, and the ice-water gave out at Hartford,” he said. “Well, here we are, though. What’s your name? Mine’s Dobbins; Joe Dobbins, only they generally call me ‘Whoa.’”
“My name is Foster,” replied Myron rather weakly.
“Foster, eh? That’s all right. I know a fellow at home name of Foster. Drives for Gandell and Frye. They’re the big dry-goods folks. He’s an all-right guy, too, Sam is. He and I used to be pretty thick before I came away. Were you here last year, Foster?”
“No, I – this is my first year.”
“What class?”
“Third, I expect.”
“Same here. I’m new, too. I was at St. Michael’s last year, until April. I beat it then. Got in wrong with faculty, you know.” He smiled and winked. “Great little school, St. Michael’s, but sort of narrow. My old man said he guessed I needed more elbow-room. So I thought I’d try this place. Looks all right so far; sort of pretty: plenty of trees. I like trees. Grew up with ’em. Maybe that’s why. Dad made his money out of trees.”
“Indeed?” responded Myron, coldly polite. “Lumber, I suppose.”
“Wrong, kiddo. Spruce gum.”
“Oh!”
“Maybe you’ve heard of him: Tom Dobbins: the Spruce Gum King, some call him.”
Myron shook his head. For some absurd reason he felt slightly apologetic, and was angry with himself for it.
“No? Well, I guess you don’t come from my part of the country. Portland, Maine’s my home. We’ve been living there six or seven years. I missed the woods at first a heap, let me tell you. Why, we used to live right in ’em: big trees all around: no town nearer than six miles. I was born there, in a log house. So were my three sisters. Them was the happy days, as the guy says.”
“Very – very interesting, I’m sure,” said Myron, “but about this room, Dobbins: You’re quite certain that they told you Number 17?”
“Sure! Why not? What’s wrong with it?” Dobbins gazed questioningly about the study and then leaned forward to peer through the open door of the bedroom. “Looks all right. Plumbing out o’ order, or something? Any one had smallpox here? What’s the idea?”
“The idea,” replied Myron a bit haughtily, “is that I am supposed to have this suite to myself. I particularly asked for a single suite. In fact, I am paying for one. So I presume that either you or I have made a mistake.”
Dobbins whistled. Then he laughed enjoyably. Myron thought it was a particularly unpleasant laugh. “Say, that’s rich,