Lindsay smiled uneasily. “I hope there isn’t a hoodoo on the place.”
“Oh, no, nothing special. They fire here by platoons. According to Tom Riley this is a record year,—fifty-two to date—and the firing season is just under way. What are you, middler or senior? I saw you to-day in senior French.”
“I’m a mixture of senior and middler, with two subjects in the junior,” replied Lindsay, who was beginning to feel ashamed of his amphibious position.
“Then you must be with the two Pecks. I’d give a silver dollar to be with that combination. They’re more fun than a box of monkeys!”
“They room in this entry, don’t they?” asked Lindsay.
“Very much so, and they’re always running in and out, singly and in pairs, and always up to some shine or other. If you didn’t know that there were only two, you’d feel sure there was at least a bushel of them.”
“Instead of half,” said Lindsay, smiling.
“Just half,” returned Tompkins. “Know any fellows yet?”
“Two or three have spoken to me. Marchmont, who seems a very nice fellow, and Poole, and that big Laughlin.”
Tompkins rose. “You’d better be a bit careful about making friends until you know who’s who. In a school like this it isn’t so easy to shake friends as it is to make ’em. But you won’t be going wrong to tie up with Phil Poole, if he gives you the chance.”
But Lindsay’s thoughts were not so much with the present members of the school as with the exiles. “If they fire as many as you say, I shouldn’t think there’d be any bad ones left.”
“Oh, bless you! fellows aren’t fired merely because they’re bad! Some are unlucky, and some are lazy, and some are considered better off elsewhere, and some are too big blockheads to keep. There are really only two punishments in this school, firing with warning and firing without. So they drop off pretty fast. The main thing, if you want to stay here, is to behave yourself and do your work. Come and see me.”
And Tompkins withdrew his body from between the door and jamb, where it had been resting during his last speech, leaving the new boy with many unuttered questions on his lips and much wonderment in his mind.
Wolcott’s acquaintance grew apace, though limited mainly to fellows of his own class section or dormitory entry, or of his own table at the dining hall. His section presented a wide range of Seaton personality. Tompkins, who having failed his preliminaries had fallen into this section in two subjects, declared that it had samples of everything the place offered except Japanese, Cubans, and twins—and the privilege of twins Wolcott enjoyed in another class.