He ensconced himself in the generous arm-chair, which bore the trace of many masters, accepted a cigar and said, to put his hosts at their ease:
"Bully quarters you've got here. Blame sight more room than I've got."
Pike, cap on, a pad under his arm, apologized for going.
"Awful sorry, Stover; darned inhospitable. This infernal _News_ grind. Hope y'will be sociable and stay till I get back."
"How are you making out?" said Stover, in an encouraging, generous way.
Pike scratched his ear, a large, loose ear, wrinkling up his long, pointed nose in a grimace, as he answered:
"Danged if I don't think I'm going to miss out again."
"You were in the first competition?" said Stover, surprised--for one trial was usually considered equivalent to a thousand years off the purgatory account.
"Yep, but I was green--didn't know the rules."
"Lord, I should think you'd have had enough!"
"Why, it's rather a sociable time. It is a grind, but I'm going to make that _News_, if I hit it all sophomore year."
There was a matter-of-fact simplicity about Pike, uncouth as was his dress and wide sombrero, that appealed to Stover. He held out his hand.
"Good luck to you! And say--if I get any news I'll save it for you."
"Holy cats!" said Dink, relapsing into the arm-chair as the door banged. "Any one who'll stick at it like that gets all I can give him."
"He's a wonderful person," said Swazey, drawing up his chair and elevating his hobnailed shoes. "Never saw anything like his determination. Wonderful! Green as salad when he first came, ready to tickle Prexy under the ribs or make himself at home whenever a room struck his fancy. But, when he got his eyes open, you ought to have seen him pick up and learn. He's developed wonderfully. He'll succeed in life."
Stover smiled inwardly at this critical assumption on Swazey's part, but he began to be interested. There was something real in both men.
"Did you go to school together?" he said.
"Lord, no! Precious little school either of us got. I ran up against him when I landed here--just bumped together, as it were."
"Fact. It was rather queer. We were both up in the fall trying to throttle a few pesky conditions and slip in. It was just after Greek prose composition--cursed be the memory!--when I came out of Alumni Hall, kicking myself at every step, and found that little rooster engaged in the same process. Say, he was a sight--looked like a chicken had been shipped from St. Louis to Chicago--but spunky as you make 'em. Never had put a collar on his neck--I got him up to that last spring; but he still balks at a derby. So off we went to grub, and I found he didn't know a soul. No more did I. So we said, 'Why not?' And we did. We hunted up these quarters, and we've got on first-rate ever since. No scratching, gouging, or biting. We've been a good team. I've seen the world, I've got hard sense, and he's got ideas--quite remarkable ideas. Danged if I'm not stuck on the little rooster."