Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/48

Rh "Oh, Stewart,"—and he pinched the firm muscles of the boy's leg gently with his big hand,—"I don't want you to act toward me in any way that is n't natural to you; but if you do have a joke on me, for heaven's sake spring it, and don't think about hurting my feelings. And if ever I get the same chance, I'll lay it on to you just as hard as I can."

He gave the leg a final squeeze and then slid down from the window-seat and got his hat.

"Going along?" he asked.

If Stewart had gone with him that time and the two had talked the matter out and then turned to ordinary things, it might all have been different. But for no particular reason Stewart was prompted to say, "No, I think I'll stay here awhile and read;" and Floyd departed, not realizing that he had separated himself from his room-mate. The magnanimity with which Floyd had treated him rankled in Stewart's jealous disposition; the episode that Floyd promptly forgot left in Stewart a sting. He had spoken truly in saying that he could not endure to be at a disadvantage. In the days that followed he glanced back frequently on this interview with a sense that Floyd had pressed his advantage. Gradually to his mind Floyd's magnanimity became remote and shaded into an exaction.

"Why should he expect me to slap him on the back and lean on his neck if I don't feel like it?" became the discontented question that Stewart asked himself, perverting the lesson of the episode. He drew no more caricatures of his room-mate and he had no jokes to "spring."

They rubbed along together for the rest of the year, during which time their intimacy diminished. Floyd became involved in athletics and was in training the year round; his chemistry engrossed him morning and afternoon on most days; one evening a week he taught mathematics at the University Settlement House; he had little leisure to give to the clubs and societies into which Stewart