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Shirlock had been a star on the Glee Club two years before, and he sang again the songs the college hummed after him in those days, while the upper-classmen looked at the Freshmen with a "now-you-see-what-you've-joined" expression, or nudged each other reminiscently, until the live-oaks in the pasture almost blended with the long shadows under them, and hoarse-throated frogs were tuning up in the irrigating ditches.
Far below, on the grounds of the Academy, cadets wearing the green uniforms of first-year Earthworms and the blue of the upper-classmen stopped all activity as they heard the blasting of the braking rockets high in the heavens. They stared enviously into the sky, watching the smooth steel-hulled spaceship drop toward the concrete ramp area of the spaceport, three miles away.
Once he had dared to go into Carlton Hall, the magnificent club-house which had been given to the university by a famous graduate. The club was for all students Ken had read that on the card sent to him, and also in the papers. But manifestly the upper-classmen had a different point of view.
He had mastered one important bit of knowledge: That a "plebe" does well to lie low, and as the result of mastering that salient fact he was well liked by the upper-classmen and found them ready to do him a good many friendly turns which a more "raty" fourth-classman would not have found coming his way.
Among the upper-classmen who would graduate in the spring were three who were at Middies' Haven whenever there was the slightest excuse for being there.
But at the Academy it was considered a breach of respect to the upper-classmen for the lower-classmen to carry canes. Pretty, however, simply sniffed at the tradition, and said it didn't interest him at all. Finally a large Senior vowed he would crack the cane in pieces over Pretty's head, if necessary. Pretty heard these threats, and was prepared for the man.
The glory of it all was that upper-classmen as well as Freshmen put themselves absolutely under the Sophomore's rule when it was a question of an examination. Thus does the elective system level all ranks and give genius opportunity. On the night that Boggs dropped in on them, Jimmy and Pellams were cramming alone.
"And I could have come home almost at once!" he said aloud, addressing the crumpled check in his hand rather than the man in the swivel-chair. "Yes. I have often wondered where you were, what you were doing. You and your brother were upper-classmen. I never knew Arthur very well; but you and I were chummy, after a fashion. Arthur was a little too bookish for my style.
Strange accounts of the Belden House party were passed from group to group of excited freshmen who declared that they were "just scared to death" of the sophomores and wouldn't for the world be out alone after dark, and of amused upper-classmen who allowed for exaggerations and considered the whole episode in the light of a good joke.
In the beginning it was such incidents as these that had bewildered Ken. He passed from surprise to anger, and vowed he would have something to say to these upper-classmen. But when the opportunity came Ken always felt so little and mean that he could not retaliate. This made him furious.
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