Page:Dick Hamilton's Cadet Days.djvu/79

Rh "Aw, Dutton, why didn't we try the rope and window game on him? It would have been sport. He looks like an all-right sort."

"He isn't in our class," replied the leader of the hazers. "He thinks his money can get him anything he wants, but he'll find out he's mistaken. It's a shame the faculty allowed him to come here, where only the best families are represented."

Dick heard it all plainly. He realized how he had been misjudged, but he resolved to live down the wrong opinion the other students seemed to have formed of him. Or perhaps they merely followed Dutton's leadership.

And so Dick was not hazed, though he was the only freshman in all the academy who escaped the ordeal, and, though many lads would gladly have dispensed with the ceremony, Dick Hamilton felt as if he would have parted with some of his fortune to have been included in the unfortunate class. For, had he been, it would have meant that he was considered as a future chum and comrade of the upperclassmen. But he had been left severely alone.

"Well, you got off lucky," commented Paul, as he began to remove his wet garments.

"Do you think so?" asked Dick, somewhat bitterly. "I rather wish they had given me what you got."

"Why?" asked his roommate.

Dick told his reasons.