Fletcher turned up his nose, but did not reply.

Hooper was a good scholar and influential in the Society, but in Fletcher’s eyes he was unworthy of consideration.

“Look here, Fletcher,—­what makes you so confoundedly exclusive is your ideas?” asked Henry Fairbanks.

“Because I respect myself,” said Fletcher in rather a surly tone.

“Then you have one admirer,” said Fairbanks.

“What do you mean by that?” asked Fletcher, suspiciously.

“Nothing out of the way.  I believe in self-respect, but I don’t see how it is going to be endangered by the admission of Oscar’s friend to the Society.”

“Am I expected to associate on equal terms with a printer’s devil?”

“I can’t answer for you.  As for me, if he is a good fellow, I shall welcome him to our ranks.  Some of our most eminent men have been apprenticed to the trade of printer.  I believe, after all, it is the name that has prejudiced you.”

“No it isn’t.  I have seen him.”

“Henry Walton?”

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“In Oscar’s room.”

“Well?”

“I don’t like his appearance.”

“What’s the matter with his appearance?” asked Oscar.

“He looks low.”

“That’s where I must decidedly contradict you, Fitz, and I shall appeal confidently to the members of the Society when they come to know him, as they soon will, for I am sure no one else shares your ridiculous prejudices.  Harry Walton, in my opinion, is a true gentleman, without reference to his purse, and he is bound to rise hereafter, take my word for it.”

“There’s plenty of room for him to rise,” said Fletcher with a sneer.

“That is true not only of him, but of all of us, I take it.”

“Do you refer to me?”

“Oh no,” said Oscar with sarcasm.  “I am quite aware that you are at the pinnacle of eminence, even if you do flunk in Greek occasionally.”

Fitzgerald had failed in the Greek recitation during the day, and that in school parlance is sometimes termed a “flunk.”  He bit his lip in mortification at this reference, and walked away, leaving Oscar master of the situation.

“You had the best of him there, Vincent,” said George Sanborn.  “He has gone off in disgust.”

“I like to see Fletcher taken down,” said Henry Fairbanks.  “I never saw a fellow put on so many airs.  He is altogether too aristocratic to associate with ordinary people.”

“Yes,” said Oscar, “he has a foolish pride, which I hope he will some time get rid of.”

“He ought to have been born in England, and not in a republic.”

“If he had been born in England, he would have been unhappy unless he had belonged to the nobility,” said Alfred DeWitt.

“Look here, boys,” said Tom Carver, “what do you say to mortifying Fitz’s pride?”

“Have you got a plan in view, Tom?  If so, out with it.”