"Me?" asked Allison, laughing incredulously. "Why, I told you I didn't know the first thing about Christian Endeavor."
"But we've gotta have your help," said the young secretary earnestly. "This thing's gotta go! It's needed in our church, and it's the only thing in the town to help some of the young people. It's just gotta go!"
"Well, if you feel that way, you'll make it go, I'm sure," encouraged Allison. "You're just the kind of a fellow to make it go. You know all about it. Not I. I never heard of the thing till last week, except just in a casual way. Don't know much about it yet."
"Well, s'pose it was one of your frats, and it wasn't succeeding. What would you do? You saw what kind of a dead-and-alive meeting we had, only a few there, and nobody taking much interest. How would you pull up a frat that was that way?"
"Well," said Allison, speaking at random, "I'd look around, and find some of the right kind of fellows, and rush 'em. Get in some new blood."
"That's all right," said Bryan doggedly. "I'm rushin' you. How do you do it? I never went to college yet; so I don't know."
Allison laughed now. He rather liked this queer boy.
"He's a nut!" he said to himself, and entered into the talk in earnest.
"Why, you have parties, and rides, and good times generally, and invite a fellow, and make him feel at home, and make him want to belong. See?"
"I see," said Bryan, with a twinkling glance at the rest of his committee. "We have a party down at my house Friday night. Will you come?"
Allison saw that the joke was on him, and his reserve broke down entirely.
"Well, I guess it's up to me to come," he said. "Yes, I'm game. I'll come."
Bryan turned his big goggles on Leslie.
"Will you come?"
"Why, yes, if Allison does, I will," agreed Leslie, dimpling.
"That's all right," said Bryan, turning back to Allison. "Now, what do you do when you rush? You'll have to teach us how."
"Well," said Allison thoughtfully, "we generally pick out our best rushers, the ones that can talk best, and put them wise. We never let the fellow that's rushed know what we're doing. Oh, if he has brains, he always knows, of course; but you don't say you're rushing him in so many words. At college we meet a fellow at the train, and show him around the place, and put him onto all the little things that will make it easy for him; and we invite him to eat with us, and help him out in every way we can. We appoint some one to look after him specially, and a certain group have him in their charge so the other frats won't have a chance to rush him----"