“Trying to get the credit with us for being just and generous!” observed Westby.  “Oh, I don’t mind; of course it’s only Kiddy.”

And it was Westby’s view of the matter which most of the boys heard and credited.  So the improvement in the general attitude for which Irving had hoped was hardly to be noticed.  He had some gratification the next Sunday when the roast beef was brought on and he carved it with creditable ease and dispatch; the astonishment of the whole table, and especially of Westby and Carroll, was almost as good as applause.  He could not resist saying, in a casual way, “The knife seems to be sharp this Sunday.”  And he felt that for once Westby was nonplussed.

But the days passed, and Irving felt that he was not getting any nearer to the boys.  At his table the talk went on before him, mainly about athletics, about college life, about Europe and automobiles,—­all topics from which he seemed strangely remote.  It needed only the talk of these experienced youths to make him realize that he had gone through college without ever touching “college life,”—­its sports, its social diversions, its adventures.  It had been for him a life in a library, in classrooms, in his own one shabby little room,—­a cloistered life; in the hard work of it and the successful winning of his way he had been generally contented and happy.  But he could not talk to these boys about “college life” as it appeared to them; and they very soon, perhaps by common consent, eliminated him from the conversation.  Nor was he able to cope with Westby in the swift, glancing monologues which flowed on and on sometimes, to the vast amusement of the audience.  Often to Irving these seemed not very funny, and he did not know which was the more trying—­to sit grave and unconcerned in the midst of so much mirth or to keep his mouth stretched in an insincere, wooden smile.  Whichever he did, he felt that Westby always was taking notes, to ridicule him afterwards to the other boys.

One habit which Westby had was that of bringing a newspaper to supper and taking the table with him in an excursion over headlines and advertising columns.  His mumbling manner, his expertness in bringing out distinctly a ridiculous or incongruous sentence, and his skill in selecting such sentences at a glance always drew attention and applause; he had the comedian’s technique.

The boys at the neighboring tables, hearing so much laughter and seeing that Westby was provoking it, would stop eating and twist round and tilt back their chairs and strain their ears eagerly for some fragment of the fun.  At last at the head table Mr. Randolph took cognizance of this daily boisterousness, spoke to Irving about it, and asked him to curb it.  Irving thereupon suggested to Westby that he refrain from reading his newspaper at table.

“But all the fellows depend on me to keep them au courant, as it were.”  Westby was fond of dropping into French in his arguments with Irving.