Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/327

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WORK AND OTHER DISSIPATIONS

What's that? Oh, you want to tell me something? Not very polite for a kid brother, seems to me: you'll have to wait till I finish. Poler Stacy got sick of the monotony of poling and the ignominy of being called a poler. One evening he was invited to dine at one of the upper-class clubs and tried to give the illusion of being a good fellow, as he conceived it; told a lot of futile little stories and performed sorry antics, which certainly made the fellows laugh, and he thought they were laughing at his humor, not his absurdity—until on leaving the club he heard a bit of conversation through an open window which opened his eyes and kept them open all that night with the result that along about noon of the next day, having cut all his lectures meanwhile, he was desperate. "They smile at you, do they?" he said to himself in the glass; "well, we'll show 'em, we'll show 'em once for all!" and he stalked out of the room, slammed the door and, scowling devilishly, strode over to a place called "Scuds," where certain of his classmates were wont to gather

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