! Hoch der Kaiser! Who loves Linski? Who,
who, who? Hoo Lun! Who loves Linski? Who, who, who? Hoo Lun!"
Linski was disgusted, resigned from the university, and disappeared.
"Well, here it isn't mid-year Exams yet, and the good ole class of
Nineteen-Eighteen's already lost a member," said Fred Mitchell. "I guess
we can bear the break-up!"
"I guess so," Ramsey assented. "That Linski might just as well stayed
here, though."
"Why?"
"He couldn't do any harm here. He'll prob'ly get more people to listen
to him in cities where there's so many new immigrants and all such that
don't know anything, comin' in all the time."
"Oh, well," said Fred. "What do _we_ care what happens to Chicago! Come
on, let's behave real wild, and go on over to the 'Teria and get us a
couple egg sandwiches and sassprilly."
Ramsey was willing.
After the strain of the "mid-year Exams" in February, they lived a
free-hearted life. They had settled into the ways of their world; they
had grown used to it, and it had grown used to them; there was no
longer any ignominy in being a freshman. They romped upon the campus
and sometimes rioted harmlessly about the streets of the town. In the
evenings they visited their fellows and Brethren and were visited in
turn, and sometimes they looked so far ahead as to talk vaguely of their
plans for professions or business--though to a freshman this concerned
an almost unthinkably distant prospect. "I guess I'll go in with my
father, in the wholesale drug business," said Fred. "My married brother
already is in the firm, and I suppose they'll give me a show--send me
out on the road a year or two first, maybe, to try me. Then I'm going to
marry some little cutie and settle down. What you goin' to do, Ramsey?
Go to Law School, and then come back and go in your father's office?"
"I don't know. Guess so."
It was always Fred who did most of the talking; Ramsey was quiet. Fred
told the "frat seniors" that Ramsey was "developing a whole lot these
days"; and he told Ramsey himself that he could see a "big change" in
him, adding that the improvement was probably due to Ramsey's having
passed through "terrible trials like that debate."
Ramsey kept to their rooms more than his comrade did, one reason for
this domesticity being that he "had to study longer than Fred did, to
keep up"; and another reason may have been a greater shyness than Fred
possessed--if, indeed, Fred possessed any shyness at all. For Fred was
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