There were many tables, each seating ten boys, and most of them were filled when Myron reached the hall. There was a good deal of noise, as was natural when nearly four hundred normally healthy boys were being fed. At Myron’s table no one appeared to be acquainted with any one else and in consequence there was little conversation. The asthmatic youth wheezily ventured a remark, but Myron’s reply was not encouraging and the youth gave all his attention again to dropping bits of biscuit in his stewed pears and salvaging them noisily. Myron was glad when the stout chap, finding nothing else to devour, sighed heavily and left the table. His place was filled again, however, a moment later by a clean-cut fellow of about nineteen years, a good-looking, neatly-dressed boy of what Myron mentally called his own sort. Conversation with him seemed natural and desirable, and Myron broke the ice by offering the biscuits. The newcomer accepted one, said “Thanks” politely and cast a brief and appraising glance over his neighbour.
“They’re not bad,” said Myron.
“No, they never are,” answered the other. “I wonder if you can reach the butter.”
Myron could and did. “Not up to the biscuits,” he offered.
“No? What seems to be wrong with it?”
“Too salty for me.”
“I see. Well, you’d naturally like it fresh.”
Myron shot a covert and suspicious glance at the other. It seemed to him that there had been a faint emphasis on the word “fresh.” Perhaps he had only imagined it, though, for his neighbour’s expression was quite guileless. He was leisurely buttering a portion of the biscuit and appeared to have forgotten Myron’s existence. Myron felt faintly uncomfortable and applied himself silently to his food. Across the board another chair was pushed back and, almost before its occupant was out of it, again taken. Myron observed rather annoyedly that the new occupant of the place was Dobbins. He nodded across and dropped his eyes to his plate. He hoped that Dobbins wouldn’t try to converse. Somehow, he didn’t want the chap at his right to think him a friend of Dobbins’. But Dobbins, after an approving look about the table, did just what Myron had hoped he wouldn’t do.
“How you making out, Foster?” he inquired. “Grub meeting your approval?”
“Yes, thanks,” responded Myron coldly.
“That’s good. I see you – Hello!”
“Hello,” said the boy at Myron’s right affably. “How do you feel now?”
“Great! It sure was hot, though. Bet you I dropped five pounds this afternoon. But I’ll get it back right now if they’ll give me half a chance!” Dobbins chuckled and Myron’s neighbour smiled responsively. Myron wondered how Dobbins and this chap beside him happened to be so chummy. He wondered still more when, a minute later, his neighbour changed his seat for one just vacated beside Dobbins, and entered into an animated conversation with him. Myron couldn’t catch more than an occasional word above the noise of talking and clattering dishes, but he knew that the subject of their discourse was football. He was glad when he had finished his supper and could leave the table.
There was a reception to the new students that evening at the Principal’s residence, but Myron didn’t go. What was the use, when by noon tomorrow he would have shaken the dust of Warne from his shoes and departed for a school where fellows of his station and worth were understood and appreciated? Joe Dobbins, however, attended and didn’t get back to the room in Sohmer until nearly ten o’clock, by which time Myron had exhausted all the reading matter he could find and, pyjama-clad, was sitting at a window and moodily looking out into the dimly lighted yard. Joe entered in his usual crash-bang manner and breezily skimmed his hat toward the table. It missed the table and went to the floor, where, so far as its owner was concerned, it was allowed to stay. Myron reflected that it wasn’t hard to account for the battered condition of that hat.
“Heard from your old man yet?” asked Joe, dropping into a chair and stretching his long legs across the floor.
“Meaning my father?” asked Myron stiffly.
“Yep. Has he telegraphed?”
“No, unless he’s sent a night message. He might. Sometimes he doesn’t get back from the yard until rather late.”
“Yard? What sort of yard?”
“Shipyard. He builds boats.”
“Oh, boatyard, you mean. I know a fellow in Portland has a boatyard. Makes some crackajack sloops.”
“We build ships,” corrected Myron patiently. “Battleships, passenger ships, cargo carriers and such. Some of them are whopping big ones: sixteen and eighteen thousand tons.”
“Gosh! I’d like to see that place. I suppose you’ll be going to work with him when you get through here.”
“Not exactly. I shall go through college first, of course.”
“Oh! Well, say, honest injun, Foster, do you think a college course cuts any ice with a fellow? The old man says I can go to a college – if I can get in, – but I don’t know. I wouldn’t get through until I was twenty-two or twenty-three, and seems to me that’s wasting a lot of time. What do you think?”
“Depends, I suppose, on – on the individual case. If you feel that you want to get to work in the chewing-gum factory and can’t afford to go through college – ”
“Where do you get that chewing-gum factory stuff?” asked Joe.
“Why, I thought you said your father made spruce gum.”
“No, the Lord makes it. The old man gathers it and sells it. Spruce gum is the resin of spruce trees, kiddo.”
“Oh,” said Myron vaguely. “Well, I dare say he will need you to help him gather it. In your case, Dobbins, going through college might be wasting time.”
Joe laughed.
“What’s the joke?” asked the other suspiciously.
“Well, I was having what you call a mind picture of the old man and me picking that gum. Know how many tons of the stuff he handles in a year? Nearly a hundred and thirty: about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds! He has over a hundred pickers employed, and buys a lot from fellows who pick on their own hook.”
“Oh!” said Myron. “Well, how was I to know? You distinctly said the Lord made it and your father gathered it, didn’t you?”
“That’s right; my error, kiddo – ”
“Kindly cut out that – ”
“Sorry; I forgot. Well, I don’t have to worry about college just yet, do I? We’ll see first if I can stick here long enough to get my time! I wouldn’t mind playing football on a good college team, though: Harvard or Yale or Dartmouth or one of those big ’uns.”
“Probably not,” replied Myron drily. “Nobody would. I wouldn’t myself.” Somehow he managed to convey the impression that in his case such a thing was not only possible but probable, but that for Joe to set his hopes so high was absurd. Joe’s greenish-grey eyes flickered once, but he made no comment. Instead:
“You played much?” he asked.
“Quite a bit,” answered the other carelessly. “I captained the Port Foster High team last fall.”
“Must
