The Fraser Scholarship
by
Elliot Campbell came down the main staircase of Marwood College and found himself caught up with a whoop into a crowd of Sophs who were struggling around the bulletin board. He was thumped on the back and shaken hands with amid a hurricane of shouts and congratulations.
“Good for you, Campbell! You’ve won the Fraser. See your little name tacked up there at the top of the list, bracketed off all by itself for the winner? ‘Elliott H. Campbell, ninety-two per cent.’ A class yell for Campbell, boys!”
While the yell was being given with a heartiness that might have endangered the roof, Elliott, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, pushed nearer to the important typewritten announcement on the bulletin board. Yes, he had won the Fraser Scholarship. His name headed the list of seven competitors.
Roger Brooks, who was at his side, read over the list aloud:
“‘Elliott H. Campbell, ninety-two.’ I said you’d do it, my boy. ‘Edward Stone, ninety-one’–old Ned ran you close, didn’t he? But of course with that name he’d no show. ‘Kay Milton, eighty-eight.’ Who’d have thought slow-going old Kay would have pulled up so well? ‘Seddon Brown, eighty-seven; Oliver Field, eighty-four; Arthur McIntyre, eighty-two’–a very respectable little trio. And ‘Carl McLean, seventy.’ Whew! what a drop! Just saved his distance. It was only his name took him in, of course. He knew you weren’t supposed to be strong in mathematics.”
Before Elliott could say anything, a professor emerged from the president’s private room, bearing the report of a Freshman examination, which he proceeded to post on the Freshman bulletin board, and the rush of the students in that direction left Elliott and Roger free of the crowd. They seized the opportunity to escape.
Elliott drew a long breath as they crossed the campus in the fresh April sunshine, where the buds were swelling on the fine old chestnuts and elms that surrounded Marwood’s red brick walls.
“That has lifted a great weight off my mind,” he said frankly. “A good deal depended on my winning the Fraser. I couldn’t have come back next year if I hadn’t got it. That four hundred will put me through the rest of my course.”
“That’s good,” said Roger Brooks heartily.
He liked Elliott Campbell, and so did all the Sophomores. Yet none of them was at all intimate with him. He had no chums, as the other boys had. He boarded alone, “dug” persistently, and took no part in the social life of the college. Roger Brooks came nearest to being his friend of any, yet even Roger knew very little about him. Elliott had never before said so much about his personal affairs as in the speech just recorded.
“I’m poor–woefully poor,” went on Elliott gaily. His success seemed to have thawed his reserve for the time being. “I had just enough money to bring me through the Fresh and Soph years by dint of careful management. Now I’m stone broke, and the hope of the Fraser was all that stood between me and the dismal certainty of having to teach next year, dropping out of my class and coming back in two or three years’ time, a complete, rusty stranger again. Whew! I made faces over the prospect.”
“No wonder,” commented Roger. “The class would have been sorry if you had had to drop out, Campbell. We want to keep all our stars with us to make a shining coruscation at the finish. Besides, you know we all like you for yourself. It would have been an everlasting shame if that little cad of a McLean had won out. Nobody likes him.”
“Oh, I had no fear of him,” answered Elliott. “I don’t see what induced him to go in, anyhow. He must have known he’d no chance. But I was afraid of Stone–he’s a born dabster at mathematics, you know, and I only hold my own in them by hard digging.”