Page 47 - The Adventures of a Freshman

done a thing for himself, but accept the club management which had, so to speak, been thrown into his
lap--and this is what he kept telling himself as he walked to and from recitations, and repeated when he went
to bed at night, and remembered when he awoke in the morning ... until--how time flies at college!--Christmas
vacation was only a week off and still nothing had turned up. He couldn't go through another term this way.

Meanwhile what made it all the harder for Young was to watch the ease with which Lee and Powelton and the
others with whom he sat down three times a day at the club, received their comfortable allowances from
home.

"Ah!" they would say, cheerfully, when a check came fluttering out of a letter. All they had to do to get
money was to open envelopes and then sign their names. "You fellows," Young used to think as he watched
them--"You fellows don't know how lucky you are." But of course he said nothing to them of what worried
him. He was not that kind. They had great respect for his abilities and thought he could do anything. They did
not guess what was going on in his mind these days, while they talked of the fun they were going to have
during the holidays. "I can't bear to think of your being away from us at Christmas," wrote the Deacon's
mother. "Perhaps," said Young to himself, "I sha'n't be away, after all."

Then he wondered what the fellows would think and what the people "out home" would say.

He knew just how his father would laugh at him, remarking, "I told you so," and how his mother, who kept
everyone informed of how Will was getting on at college, would cry; for it would be as great a disappointment
to her as to him. It would surprise her, too, for he had not let her know how much he had spent, telling himself
that it would only worry her unnecessarily, that when the time came he would pitch in and do something.

"Deacon," said Lucky Lee on the way to luncheon, "you're to come home with me for the holidays--at least
mother says so in this letter. Course, I don't want you, but I'll obey my mother."

The sober Deacon laughed at the pleasantry, and thanked Lucky, but shook his head at the little fellow's
repeated importunities. Young felt that he couldn't afford even to buy a ticket to New York and back.

His excuses were so lame, however, that the bright-eyed little Lucky suddenly got an inkling of what was the
trouble. "Say, Deacon," he began when they were alone, "if you should ever get hard up, I hope you have
decency enough to give your friends a chance to--- "

Young blushed and shook his head.

"I don't mean particularly about this vacation," Lucky went on. "You're coming home with me all right, if I
have to carry you on my back all the way. I mean in general. For instance, if you--er--that is, well, blame it,
we're good enough friends. If you are 'temporarily embarrassed,' as they say, when you come back after
Christmas, you'll do what I would do if I were hard up, won't you? If you wouldn't you're no friend of mine."

"What would you do, Lucky?"

"I'd let you lend me some dough--naturally."

Young hesitated. "Lucky," he said, "I am hard up--don't tell anybody, but I'm mighty hard up. I'd rather leave
college, though, than borrow money to stay here with."

But Young spent Christmas holidays with Lucky Lee in New York, and it turned out to be a very good thing
that he did--not only on account of the temporary rest from worry.