blowing a child's horn, positively threw herself upon his neck.
He disengaged himself, not very gently, and stalked grimly away
to the dressing shed.... What was the use, if you were always
with the wrong crowd?

Julius Erlich, who played quarter on the State team, took him
aside and said affably: "Come home to supper with me tonight,
Wheeler, and meet my mother. Come along with us and dress in the
Armory. You have your clothes in your suitcase, haven't you?"

"They're hardly clothes to go visiting in," Claude replied
doubtfully.

"Oh, that doesn't matter! We're all boys at home. Mother wouldn't
mind if you came in your track things."

Claude consented before he had time to frighten himself by
imagining difficulties. The Erlich boy often sat next him in the
history class, and they had several times talked together.
Hitherto Claude had felt that he "couldn't make Erlich out," but
this afternoon, while they dressed after their shower, they
became good friends, all in a few minutes. Claude was perhaps
less tied-up in mind and body than usual. He was so astonished at
finding himself on easy, confidential terms with Erlich that he
scarcely gave a thought to his second-day shirt and his collar
with a broken edge,--wretched economies he had been trained to
observe.

They had not walked more than two blocks from the Armory when
Julius turned in at a rambling wooden house with an unfenced,