was tired as a result
of the football practice and he had a lame tendon in his left leg which
he believed he had sustained in his flying leap onto the hedge when
going to the relief of Angel, and which bothered him a little now that
he had stopped using it. But his weariness and soreness hadn't kept him
from eating an enormous dinner in the Dining Hall down stairs, any more
than it was going to keep him from going to sleep in a few minutes.

During dinner he had begun to feel at home. He had found himself at Mr.
Cobb's table, which later on would be weeded out to make room for the
football players, and had sat next to Captain Rogers, who had spoken to
him several times quite affably, but not about football. The other
fellows, too, had shown a disposition to accept him as one of them, if
we omit Horace Burlen and Otto Ferris, and by the time Roy had scraped
the last morsel of pudding from his dish he had commenced to think that
life at Ferry Hill might turn out to be "both pleasant and profitable,"
as Harry had phrased it. After dinner he had spent the better part of an
hour in the study room on the first floor composing a letter home. That
finished, he had wandered down to the river and had been mildly rebuked
by Mr. Buckman, an instructor, for going out of bounds after eight
o'clock. There had been prayers at nine in the two dormitories and after
that, in the midst of shouts and laughter and general "rough house," he
had undressed, washed, donned his pajamas and jumped into the narrow
white enamelled bed to which he had been assigned.

Tomorrow lessons would begin and he wondered how he was going to fare.
He had entered on a certificate from his grammar school and had been put
into the Second Senior Class. If he could keep up with that he would be
ready for college in two years. Roy's father pretended to think him
backward because he would not enter until he was eighteen, and delighted
in telling him of boys who had gone to college at sixteen. But Roy's
mother always came to his defence. There was no sense, she declared
warmly, in boys going to college before they were old enough to
understand what it meant and to derive benefit from the life. And Roy's
father would shake his head dubiously and mutter that he had never
expected a son of his to be a dullard.

Greek and English were what Roy was afraid of. Latin and mathematics
held no terrors for him. As for the other studies, he believed he could
worry along with the