Irving had triumphed, but after the first moment he felt surprisingly
little satisfaction in his triumph. He could not help being sorry for
Westby; the boy was after all right in feeling that he had been deprived
of a victory to which he had been entitled. And as Irving looked at his
downcast face, he softened still further; Westby had so often delighted
in humiliating him, and he had longed for the opportunity of reprisal.
Now it had come, and Westby was humiliated, and the audience were not
unsympathetic with Irving for the achievement; yet Irving felt already
the sting of remorse. Westby was only a boy, and he was a master; it was
not well for a master to mortify a boy in the presence of other boys—a
boy whose disappointment was already keen.

The letters were distributed; there was one for Irving from his brother.
It contained news that made the world a different place from what it had
been an hour ago. Lawrence was playing left end on the Harvard Freshman
football eleven; not only that, but in the first game of the season,
played against a Boston preparatory school, he had made the only
touchdown. He added that that didn’t mean much, for he had got the ball
on a fluke; still, the tone of the letter was excited and elated.

And it excited and elated Irving. He folded the letter and put it in his
pocket; he sat for a moment looking out of the window with dreamy eyes
and an unconscious smile. Lawrence was succeeding, was going to succeed,
in a way far different from his own—if his own college course could be
said in any sense to have terminated in success. Lawrence would have the
athletic and the social experience which he had never had; Lawrence
would be popular as he had never been; Lawrence would go brilliantly
through college as he had never done. Everything now was in Lawrence’s
reach, and he was a boy who would not be spoiled or led astray by the
achievement of temporary glories.