“I don't know and I don't care,” said Ramsey. “You don't suppose I asked her to go _again_, do you?”
“Well, for one thing, you don't suppose I want her to think I'm a perfect fool, do you?”
Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire. “What was the lecture?” he asked, mildly.
“Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and closer--”
“Well, she thinks so, anyhow,” said Ramsey, “and she's all broken up about it. Of course she thinks we oughtn't to fight and she's trying to get everybody else she can to keep working against it. She isn't goin' home again next summer, she's goin' back to that settlement work in Chicago and work there among those people against our goin' to war; and here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it, and--”
“What did you say?” Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply: “Nothin'. I started to, but--”
Ramsey got up. “Now look here! You know the 'frat' passed a rule that if we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin' we'd both be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece. Well, I can afford five dollars this month better than you can, and--”
“I take it back!” Fred interposed, hastily. “But you just listen to me; you look out--letting her think you're on her side like that.”
Ramsey looked dogged. “I'm not goin' around always arguin' about everything when arguin' would just hurt people's feelings about something they're all excited about, and wouldn't do a bit o' good in the world--and you know yourself just _talk_ hardly ever settles anything--so I don't--”
“Aha!” Fred cried. “I thought so! Now you listen to me--”
But at this moment they were interrupted. Someone slyly opened the door, and a snowball deftly thrown from without caught Ramsey upon the back of the neck and head, where it flattened and displayed itself as an ornamental star. Shouting fiercely, both boys sprang up, ran to the door, were caught there in a barrage of snowballs, ducked through it in spite of all damage, charged upon a dozen besweatered figures awaiting them and began a mad battle in the blizzard. Some of their opponents treacherously joined them, and turned upon the ambushers.
In the dusk the merry conflict waged up and down the snow-covered lawn, and the combatants threw and threw, or surged back and forth, or clenched and toppled over into snow banks, yet all coming to chant an extemporized battle-cry in chorus, even as they fought the most wildly.