Page 51 - The Adventures of a Freshman

introduction."

"Aren't you glad now you went home Christmas with me?" said Lucky, exultingly; "otherwise you wouldn't
have heard us talking about that old woman and her bully caramels."

For a week or so C. C.'s were sold as fast as they could be supplied. They had become "the thing." Students
munched them in their rooms, during their walks, on the way to lecture-rooms, and even inside. They sent
them home to their sisters and to their roommates' sisters. They told the story in their letters, and their friends
sent stamps and requests for other packages of "those delicious things."

Of course the first boom died down, as Young knew it would; but there remained a good, steady, normal
demand for them, and before long he had cleared, in all, $150.

"Now," thought Will Young, "I am going to lean back and enjoy life like Todd and the rest of them. Seems to
me I have a right to."

Of course it had leaked out by this time, as such things always do, who was at the bottom of the C. C.
business, and the college said: "What! that big, sober-looking green Freshman that did up Ballard? He's quite
a boy, isn't he?"

Now, when this got around to the Invincibles, and so to Will Young, he only scowled and thought: "I don't see
why they still call me green. I should think by this time"--then he looked down the table. "Are you coming up
to get in the game this evening?" he heard Billy Drew murmur to Minerva Powelton.

They did not ask the Deacon, and for some reason the Deacon resented it. Why? A few months ago he would
have resented it if they had asked him.

One wet, muddy day toward the end of the winter two dignified Juniors, Jimmy Linton, the philosopher, and
Billy Nolan, the football man, were walking across the quadrangle to a four o'clock lecture.

"Billy," said Linton, "a Freshman is a funny thing. You never can tell how they are going to turn out. See that
fellow ahead there?"

"Why, that's Young the Freshman guard. Say, Jim, that boy's going to make the Varsity before he gets out of
college."

Linton said, "He may make the team, but he's going to make a fool of himself first."

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, it's the same old story," Linton smiled. "He's in with a sporty crowd and is beginning to try to act the
way they do. He's a Freshman."

Nolan shook his head. "You're stuck on your ability to size people up, but I don't believe Young's that sort of a
fool."

"No, and he doesn't, either. That's just the trouble. It's coming on him unconsciously. You see he's heard his
table-mates talk so much about things he used to abhor that he's got accustomed to them, and he's ceased to
abhor them. But he doesn't stop there; they seldom do, you know. You can tell by his walk that his way of
looking at things has changed."