Dick and Larry: Freshmen

They were not twins; they were not brothers or even relatives. For that matter, at the moment when their train was clattering over the last few miles of the long journey from the far-western home-land to the college town where they expected to spend the next four years, the joint name by which they were to be known at the take-off had not yet been coined. But, as everybody knows, there is no accounting for college nicknames. They are handed you right off the bat, and that’s all there is to it.

To make the “twin” thing still more of a joke, they didn’t look much more alike than Little Lord Fauntleroy and Huck Finn. About the only feature they had in common was a rich stain of brown sunburn, acquired in a summer of railroad building in the Timanyoni Mountains of western Colorado. Dick Maxwell, son of the general manager of the Nevada Short Line, was possibly twenty pounds the lighter of the two, and he had the fine-lined face and easy manner of a fellow who has never had to think of how his clothes fitted, or what to do with his hands; while Larry Donovan――but Larry deserves a paragraph to himself.

He had the window seat in the Pullman section, and was staring out at the rather monotonous Middle-Western farmstead landscape hurtling past with that sort of half-shy look in his good, wide-set eyes which is the first symptom of homesickness. The big-framed, curly-headed fellow, who had been Dick’s partner on the summer job, was the son of an ex-locomotive engineer on the Short Line, and he owed his college chance partly to the good work he had done on the railroad-building job, and partly to the generosity of Dick’s father. In a grim, workmanlike way, he was determined to make the utmost of the chance; but that fact didn’t say anything whatever to the other fact that this was his first long-distance jump from the home circle.

“Why the wan look to starboard, Larry?” Dick asked with the grin which, on his face, was never more than a good-natured, quizzical smile. “Thinking about the little old home shack back in Brewster, and how far away it has gone?”

Larry turned slow eyes upon his companion.

“Don’t see how you can take it so easy,” he grumbled back; and then, after a moment’s thought: “Maybe I can, too. You’re used to being away from home and mixing and mingling with people. I’m not.”

Dick smiled again.

“Not getting scared out already, are you?”

“No; it isn’t scare; it’s――well, I don’t know just what you’d call it. But I’d give a lot if we were settled down, and I knew what to-morrow’s job was going to be, and was boning for it out of a book.”

Dick turned short upon the wisher.

“See here, Larry,” he said; “don’t you go starting in at Old Sheddon on the wrong slant. You did it in Brewster High――you know you did; never came out to class doings, or anything. I remember you told me once that the fellows and girls didn’t need a ‘greasy mechanic’ to fill out the list. Dad says there’s a lot more to college than just sticking your nose in a book, and I believe it. You’re going to miss it by a long mile if you do the turtle-in-a-shell act.”

What Larry Donovan might have replied to this little lecture on turtles and their habits was forestalled by a panorama of suburban homes flitting past the car windows, a grinding of the brakes, the rumbling of the train across a bridge, and the long jump was fully taken.

Being strangers from afar, the two Freshmen did not expect to be met at the station, and they were not. But Dick knew what to do and where to go.

“A ‘Sheddon’ street-car is what we want, and there’s one coming, right now,” he said; then: “Hoo-e-e-e! Look at the green caps on it. I thought we’d be the only early birds, but it seems we’re not.”

They didn’t get seats in the small trolley car, because the seats were all packed and jammed, and so was the aisle; but they crowded in, some way. While they were stowing their grips, a thick-bodied fellow, with a wide mouth and a voice like that of a megaphoning yell leader, asked Dick where they were from.

“Brewster,” said Dick, as if the name of the small home city were enough to identify it anywhere.

“And where in the cat’s name is Brewster?” boomed the big voice.

“I’ll tell you――strictly in confidence,” Dick replied, wrinkling his nose. “It’s in Timanyoni Park.”

Right then and there the nickname was born.

“Ho, fellows!” roared the megaphonic chap, commanding the instant attention of the packed carful, “we’ve got ’em, right here; the only original stem-winding, stem-setting doodle-bugs from the wild and woozy――the Timanyoni Twins!”

Dick laughed with the rest of the carful, and Larry felt himself blushing a dark, dark red under his masking coat of sunburn――which is as good a way as any of telling how this sudden thrust into the limelight affected each. Beyond the christening, Dick fell easily into talk with the megaphonist――Wally Dixon, by name, and hailing from somewhere in Missouri. But Larry was soberly uncomfortable until they left the car to lug their grips down a cross street which skirted the Sheddon campus.

The “Man-o’-War” was the house they were looking for, and they found it――a respectable two-storied dwelling, as little like a ship as might be――on a corner facing the Mechanical Engineering Laboratory. Dick’s father had written ahead to engage their room, and it was good, motherly Mrs. Grant herself who opened the door for them.

Mrs. Grant proved to be as hospitable as she looked. There were to be six fellows in the house, she explained; two Juniors who had been there the year before, and four Freshmen. One of the Juniors had arrived, but the other and the two additional Freshmen were yet to come. Dick and Larry were to make themselves at home, and the arrived Junior, a husky-looking chap named Merkle, would show them their room.

Merkle did the showing――to a large, plainly furnished room on the second floor――and took an upperclassman’s privilege of casting himself into the one easy-chair while the newcomers unpacked their grips.

“Where are you fellows from?” he asked.

This time Dick did not try to be funny. “Brewster――western Colorado,” he replied.

“Some little jump, I’ll say,” Merkle commented. “Ever here before?”

“Nope.”

“Then you’ll want to know some of the Sheddon traditions; every college has ’em. If you know ’em beforehand, it’s easier.”

“Shoot,” said Dick; “we’re here to learn.” Then, with a fine assumption of uninformed innocence: “Where can I get one of those sweaters with an ‘S’ on it, like the one you’re wearing?”

“That’s the first of the traditions,” returned the big Junior, with a little frown; “not to be fresh with your elders.”

Dick apologized handsomely.

“That was fresh,” he admitted. “I can see that the green cap is going to fit me like a tailor-made suit of tights. Please forget it, and tell us some of the traditions.”

Merkle briefed them. No smoking on the campus――which didn’t hit either of the “twins” because as yet they didn’t smoke anywhere――no cutting of class or college celebrations; no backing down when they were asked to take part in any of the college activities; no shirking of the “try-outs” for the various athletic teams.

“Lots of other little stunts that you’ll absorb as you come to ’em,” Merkle concluded; adding: “Of course, you’ll both be in the bridge scrap. You can’t do much but make a loud noise on the side-lines, because you’re not beefy enough”――meaning Dick; “but you”――with a nod for Larry――“you look fit enough to heave a locomotive off the track. Played on your High School eleven, didn’t you?”

Larry nodded, and Dick explained: “Half-back; he’s too modest to tell you so himself. But what about this bridge scrap?”

“It’s the pure quill,” said Merkle. “Dark night; single-span concrete bridge about a mile back in the country. Sophomores defend it; Freshies try to rush it. Two upper classes on hand to keep the murder list as low as possible. You’ll like it.”

“What do we get out of it if we win?” Dick demanded.

“Undying fame――and the right to paint the numerals of your class on the portal arch. It’s been eight years since a Freshman class did it.”

Dick nodded.