“Did you strike him, Will?” inquired Foster, a smile of amusement appearing on his face.

“No, but I’d like to!  His soul would get lost in the eye of a needle!  He’s the smallest specimen I have ever run up against.  He may know Greek, but he doesn’t know anything else.  I never in all my life saw—­”

“Tell me about it, Will,” interrupted Foster.

Thus bidden, Will related the story of his interview with his professor of Greek.  When Foster laughed as he told of Splinter’s description of his marvelously increased corpulence, Will did not join, for the ludicrous side now was all swallowed up in his anger.  And when his room-mate scowled as he heard of the professor’s insinuation that the young freshman was trying to “boot-lick,” Will’s anger broke forth afresh.  “What’s the use in my trying, I’d like to know?” he demanded.  “I’ve never tried harder in my life than I have for the last three or four weeks.  And what does old Splinter have to say about it?  ’Oh, I’m doing better and if I keep on I’ll almost come up to the passing mark!’ I tell you, it isn’t fair!  It isn’t right!  He’s just determined to put me out!”

“Perhaps he thinks he’s bound to stick to the marks he’s given you before.”

“Yes, that’s it.  But think of it, Foster.  Here I am doing better and putting in my best work.  And the old fellow acknowledges it too, for he says so himself.  But what does it all amount to?  He doesn’t give me any credit for what I’ve been doing lately.  No, he’s just tied up to the marks I got at the beginning of the year.  What fairness is there in that, I’d like to know?  That’s the way they do in State’s prison, but I didn’t suppose old Winthrop was built exactly on that plan.  I thought the great point here was to wake a man up and inspire him to try to do better and all that sort of thing.  And I am doing better, and I know it, and so does he, but his soul is so dried up and withered that he can’t think of anything but ancient history.  He hasn’t the least idea of what’s going on here to-day.  I’ll bet the old fellow, when he has the toothache, groans in dactylic hexameters and calls for his breakfast in the Ionic dialect.  Bah!  What’s all the stuff good for anyway?  I haven’t any reason for trying any more.”

“Yes, you have.”

“I have?  Well, what is it?”

“Your father, if nothing else.”

Will instantly became silent, for Foster’s words only seemed to call up before him the vision of his father’s face.  He was the best man that had ever lived, Will declared to himself, and his conviction had been strengthened as he had seen the relations between many of his college mates and their fathers.  How he would be grieved over it all.  And yet Will knew that never an unkind word would be spoken.  It was almost more than he could bear, he thought, and his eyes were glistening when he arose from his seat to respond to a knock on the door.  As he opened it he saw standing before him his own father and the father of Peter John Schenck, and with a yell of delight he grasped his father’s outstretched hand and pulled him hastily into the room.