THE COLLEGE AND THE CIRCUS
how white that man was. The Faculty don't talk like that to me, as a rule." He smiled a little at grim recollections of experiences at Faculty meetings. It was his own fault, he knew; he told himself that he had been a great fool. But now that he was trying to control the exuberance of hot, youthful blood, he had often wished they would give him a chance to show that he was something more than "a mere athlete," as little, dried-up Professor Saunders once called him.
And now here it had come, most unexpectedly, and from the President himself, who had talked to him quite in that trustful man-to-man manner that the professors had always used with Nick Norris, the last year's Captain—who, however, was also a high-stand man.
"Why couldn't something of this sort happen before?" he said to himself as he started off to catch up with the other fellows. "It's just my luck! If he had only talked to me like this a couple of weeks ago when the show-bills were first posted; I don't say I
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