in his peculiar physique, though
there was always the disappointment of not finding him tall. He was of
the middle height, but he was hewn out and squared upward massively. He
felt like stone to any accidental contact, and the painter brought away
a bruise from the mere brunt of his shoulders. He learned that Jeff was
a frequenter of the gymnasium, where his strength must have been known,
but he could not make out that he had any standing among the men who
went in for athletics. If Jeff had even this, the sort of standing in
college which he failed of would easily have been won, too. But he
had been falsely placed at the start, or some quality of his nature
neutralized other qualities that would have made him a leader in
college, and he remained one of the least forward men in it. Other jays
won favor and liking, and ceased to be jays; Jeff continued a jay. He
was not chosen into any of the nicer societies; those that he joined
when he thought they were swell he could not care for when he found they
were not.

Westover came into a knowledge of the facts through his casual and
scarcely voluntary confidences, and he pitied him somewhat while he
blamed him a great deal more, without being able to help him at all.

It appeared to him that the fellow had gone wrong more through ignorance
than perversity, and that it was a stubbornness of spirit rather than a
badness of heart that kept him from going right. He sometimes wondered
whether it was not more a baffled wish to be justified in his own esteem
than anything else that made him overvalue the things he missed. He knew
how such an experience as that with Mrs. Marven rankles in the heart of
youth, and will not cease to smart till some triumph in kind brines it
ease; but between the man of thirty and the boy of twenty there is a
gulf fixed, and he could not ask. He did not know that a college man
often goes wrong in his first year, out of no impulse that he can very
clearly account for himself, and then when he ceases to be merely of his
type and becomes more of his character, he pulls up and goes right. He
did not know how much Jeff had been with a set that was fast without
being fine. The boy had now and then a book in his hand when he came;
not always such a book as Westover could have wished, but still a book;
and to his occasional questions about how he was getting on with his
college work, Jeff made brief answers, which gave the notion that he was
not neglecting it.