"Dish out the bunny," said Slops, putting down his mug with a reckless look.
Suddenly there came an impressive knock and the voice of Mr. Bundy saying:
"Open the door, Stover!"
In a thrice the revelry broke up, the telltale bottle and glasses were stowed under the window-seat, the visiting sporting gentlemen precipitately groveled to places of concealment, while Stover extinguished the lights and softly stole into bed.
"Open the door at once!"
"Who's there?" said Dink with a start.
"Open the door!"
All sleepy innocence Dink opened the door, rubbing his eyes at the sudden glow.
"Up after lights?" said Mr. Bundy, marching in.
"I, sir?" said Dink, astounded.
All at once Mr. Bundy perceived the chafing-dish and descended upon it. Stover's heart sank—if he tasted it they were lost; no power could save them. Mr. Bundy turned and surveyed the room; one by one the terrified roués were dragged forth and recognized, while the Tennessee Shad sat on the edge of his bed, reflectively sharpening his fingers on the pointed knee-caps.
Then, to the horror of all, Mr. Bundy, sniffingthe chafing-dish, inserted a spoon and tasted it. Immediately he set the spoon down with a crash, gave a furious glance at Stover and departed, after ordering them to their rooms.
The dead game sports, white and shaky, went without stopping.
"They're a fine sample of vicious bounders, they are!" said the Tennessee Shad. "Bet that Slops Barnett is weeping to his pillow now!"
"I'm sorry I got you into this," said Stover gloomily.
"You've brought my gray hairs in sorrow to the grave!" said the Tennessee Shad solemnly.
"Don't jest," said Dink in a still voice. "It's all up with me, but I'll square you."
"Don't worry," said the Tennessee Shad, smiling. "I may not be a tin sport, but I keep my thinker going all the time."
"Why, what do you mean?"
"I mean you'll get twigged for a midnight spread, that's all."
"But the beer. Bundy tasted the beer."
"Taste it yourself," said the Tennessee Shad, with a wave of his hand.
Stover hurriedly dipped in a spoon, tasted it and uttered an execration.
"Murder, what did you put in it?"
"About half a bottle of horse liniment," said the Tennessee Shad, crawling back into bed."Only, don't tell the others if you want to see how much dead game sportiness there is in them by to-morrow morning."
The affair made a great noise and, as Stover suppressed the transformation worked by the Tennessee Shad, Slops Barnett and his companions did not exactly show those qualities of Stoic resignation which might be expected from brazen characters with their view of life.
Meanwhile, the skies cleared and the earth hardened, and the air resounded with the cries of baseball candidates.
Much to his surprise, Dink found at the end of the strenuous day no impelling desire to plunge into fast life. Still the conviction remained for a long time that his soul had been surrendered, that not only was he destined for the gallows in this world, but that only the prayers of his mother might save him from being irrevocably damned in the next. It was a terrific thought, and yet it brought a certain pleasure. He was different from the rest. He was a man of the world. He had known—Life!
The episode ended as episodes in the young days end—in a laugh.
"I say, Dink," said the Tennessee Shad one afternoon in April, as, gloriously reveling on the warm turf, they watched the 'Varsity nine.
"Say it."
"In your dead-game sporting days did you ever, by chance, paint your nicotine fingers with iodine?"
"How in blazes did you know?"
"Used to do it myself," said the Shad reminiscently. Then he added: "Thought yourself a lost soul?"
Stover began to laugh.
"All alone in a cold, cold world—wicked, very wicked?"
"Perhaps."
"And it was rather a nice feeling, too, wasn't it?"
"I didn't know, you——" said Dink, blushing to find himself back in the common herd.
"Me, too," said the Tennessee Shad, sucking a straw. "Good old sporting days!" Presently he began mischievously:
"Then stand by your glasses steady,This world is a——"
But here Dink, rising up, tumbled him over.
With the complete arrival of the spring came also a lessening ofDink's requested appearances at Faculty meetings, his little evening chats in The Roman's study on matters of disciplinary interpretation and the occasional summons through the gates of Avernus to quail before the all-seeing eye.
It was not that the spirit of Spartacus was faint, or that his enmity had weakened toward The Roman—who, of course, without the slightest doubt, was always the persecutor responsible for his summons before the courts of injustice. The truth was, Stover had suddenly begun to age and to desire to put from himself youthful things. This extraordinary phenomenon that somehow does happen was in some measure a reflex action.
Ever since the stormy afternoon on which he had decided against his own eleven, he had slowly come to realize that he had won a peculiar place in the estimation of the school—somewhat of the dignity of the incorruptible judges that existed in former days. He became in a small way a sort of court of arbitration before which questionsof more or less gravity were submitted. This deference at first embarrassed, then amused, then finally pleased him with an acute, mannish pleasure.
The consequence was that Stover, who until this time had only looked forward and up at the majestic shadows of the fourth and fifth formers, now looked backward and down, and became pleasurably aware that leagues below him was the large body of the first and second forms. Having perceived this new adjustment he woke with a start and, rubbing his eyes, took stock of his amazing knowledge of life and again said to himself that now, finally, he certainly must have arrived at man's estate.
On top of which, having been asked to referee several disputes in his character of Honest John Stover, Dink, while holding himself in reserve to direct operations on a dignified and colossal scale against the Natural Enemy, decided that it was unbecoming of a man of his position, age and reputation, who had the entrée of the Upper House, to go skipping about the midnight ways, in undignified costume, with such rank shavers as Pebble Stone and Dennis de B. de B. Finnegan.
So when Dennis arrived after lights, like a will-o'-the-wisp, with a whispered:
"I say, Dink, all ready."
Stover replied:
"All ready in bed."
"What," said Dennis aghast, "you're not with us?"
"No."
"Aren't you feeling well?"
"First rate."
"But I say, Dink, there's half a dozen of us. We've got all the laundry bags in the house heaped up just outside of Beekstein's door and, I say, we're going to pile 'em all up on top of him and then jump on and pie him, and scoot for our rooms before old Bundy can jump the stairs and nab us. It'll be regular touch and go—a regular lark! Come on!"
A snore answered him.
"You won't come?"
"No."
"Are you mad at me?"
"No, I'm sleepy!"
"Sleepy!" said Dennis in such amazement that he no longer had any strength to argue, and left the room convinced that Stover was heroically concealing an agony of pain.
Stover immediately settled his tired body, sunk his nose to the level of the covers and floated blissfully off into the land of dreams. The next night and the next it was the same. For a whole month Dink slept, wasting not a one of the preciousmoments of the night, sleeping through the slow-moving recitations, sleeping on the green turf of afternoons, pillowed on Tough McCarty or the Tennessee Shad, and watching others scampering around the diamond in incomprehensible activity; but the month was the month of April and his years sixteen. In the first week of May Stover awakened, the drowsiness dropped from him and the spirit of perpetual motion again returned. Still, the distance between himself and his past remained. He had changed, become graver, more laconic, moving with sedateness, like Garry Cockrell, whose tricks of speech and gestures he imitated, holding himself rather aloof from the populace, curiously conscious that the change had come, and sometimes looking back with profound melancholy on the youth that had now passed irrevocably away.
During this period of somewhat fragile self-importance, the acquaintance with Tough McCarty had strengthened into an eternal friendship in a manner that had a certain touch of humor.
McCarty, after the close of the football season, had repeatedly sought out his late antagonist, but, though Dink at the bottom of his soul was thrilled with the thought that here at last was the friend of friends, the Damon to his Pythias,the chum who was to stand shoulder to his shoulder, and so on, still there was too much self-conscious pride in him to yield immediately to this feeling.
McCarty perceived the reserve without quite analyzing it, and was puzzled at the barriers that still intervened.
During the winter, when Dink was resolutely set in the pursuit of that beau-ideal, which had a marked resemblance with a certain creation of Bret Harte's, Mr. Jack Hamlin, "gentleman sport," as Dennis would have called him, McCarty found little opportunity for friendly intercourse. He disapproved of many of Dink's friendships, not so much from a moralistic point of view as from Stover's not exercising the principle of selection. As this phase was intensified and Stover became the object of criticism of his classmates for hanging at the heels of fifth-formers and neglecting his own territory, McCarty resolved that the plain duty of a friend required him to administer a moral lecture.
This heroic resolve threw him into confusion for a week, for, in the first place, he had been accustomed to receive rather than to give words of warning and, in the second place, he was fully aware of the difficulties of opening up the subject at all.
After much anxious and gloomy cogitation hehit upon a novel plan and, approaching Stover at the end of the last recitation, gave him a mysterious wink.
"What's up?" said Dink instantly.
McCarty pulled him aside:
"I've got a couple of A. No. 1 millionaire cigars," he said in a whisper. "If you've got nothing better, why, come along."
"I'm yours on the jump," said Dink, trying to give to his words a joy which he was far from feeling in his stomach.
"You smoke cigars?"
"Do I!"
"Come on, then!"
It was the last day of March, which had gone out like a lamb, leaving the ground still chill and moist with the memory of departed snows. They went down by the pond in the shelter of the grove and McCarty proudly produced two cigars coated with gilt foil.
"They look the real thing to me," said Dink, eying the long projectiles with a rakish, professional look.
Now, Dink had never smoked a cigar in his life and was alarmed at the thought of the task before him; but he was resolved to die a lingering death rather than allow that humiliating secret to be discovered.
"You bet they're the real thing," said ToughMcCarty, slipping off the foil. "Real, black beauties! Get the flavor?"
Dink approached the ominous black cigar to his nose, sniffed it rapturously and cocked a knowing eye.
"Aha!"
"Real Havanas!"
"They certainly smell good!"
"Swiped 'em off my brother-in-law, forty-five centers."
"I believe it. Say, what do you call 'em?"
"Invincibles."
The name threw a momentary chill over Stover, but he instantly recovered.
"I say, we ought to have a couple of hatpins," he said, turning the cigar in his fingers.
"What for?"
"Smoke 'em to the last puff!"
"We'll use our penknives."
"All right—after you."
Stover cautiously drew in his first puff. To his surprise nothing immediate happened.
"How is it?" said McCarty.
"Terrific!"
"Do you inhale?"
"Sometimes," said Stover, with an inconsequential wave of his hand.
This gave McCarty his opening; besides, he was deceived by Stover's complete manner."Dink, I'm afraid you're smoking too much," he said earnestly, puffing on his cigar.
"Oh, no," said Dink, immensely flattered by this undeserved accusation from McCarty, who smoked forty-five-cent cigars.
"Yes, you are. I know it. Trouble with you is, old boy, you never do anything by halves. I know you."
"Oh, well," said Stover loftily.
"You're smoking too much, and that's not all, Dink. I—I've wanted to have a chance at you for a long while, and now I'm going for you."
"Hello——"
"Now, look here, boy," said Tough McCarty, filling the air with the blue smoke, "I'm not a mammy boy nor a goody-goody, and I don't like preaching; but you've got too much ahead of you, old rooster, to go and throw it away."
"What do you mean?" said Dink, champing furiously on his cigar, as he had seen several stage villains do.
"I mean, old socks," said Tough, frowning with his effort—"I mean there are some fellows here who are worth while and some who are not, who won't do you any good, who don't amount to a row of pins, and aren't up to you in any way you look at it."
"Are you criticising my friends?" said Stover,who had just passed an even more unflattering judgment, due to the Welsh-rabbit episode.
"I am," said McCarty, passing his hand over his forehead with difficulty.
Stover was just about to make an angry reply when he looked at McCarty, who suddenly leaned back against the tree. At the same moment a feeling of insecurity overtook him. He started again to make an angry answer and then all pugnacious thoughts left him. He sat down suddenly, his head swam on his shoulders and about him the woods danced in drunken reelings, sweeping grotesque boughs over him. Only the earth felt good, the damp, muddy earth, which he all at once convulsively embraced.
"Dink!"
The sound was far off, weak and fraught with mortal distress.
"Has it hit you, too?"
Dink's answer was a groan. He opened one eye; McCarty, prone at his side, lay on his stomach, burying his head in his arms.
At this moment a light patter sounded about them.
"It's beginning to rain."
"I don't care!"
"Neither do I."
Stover lay clutching the earth, that somehowwouldn't kept still, that moved under him, that swayed and rose and fell. Then things began to rush through his brain: armies of football-clad warriors, The Roman whirling by on one leg of his chair, Dennis de Brian de Boru Finnegan prancing impishly, sticking out his tongue at him, whole flocks of Sunday preachers gesticulating in his direction, crowds of faces, legs, arms, an old, yellow dog with a sausage in his mouth——
Suddenly near him McCarty began to move.
"Where are you going?" he managed to say. "For Heaven's sake, don't leave me."
"To the pond—drink."
McCarty, on his hands and knees, began to crawl. Stover raised himself up and staggered after. The rain came down unheeded—nothing could add to his misery. They reached the pond and drank long copious drinks, plunging their dripping heads in the water.
Gradually the vertigo passed. Faint and weak they sat propped up opposite each other, solemnly, sadly, glance to glance, while unnoticed the rain spouted from the ends of their noses.
"Oh, Dink!" said Tough at last.
"Don't!"
"I thought I was going to die."
"I'm not sure of it yet."
"I had a lot I wanted to say to you," saidTough painfully, feeling the opportunity was slipping away.
"You said I was smoking too much," said Dink maliciously.
"Ugh! Don't—no, that wasn't it."
"Shut up, old cockalorum," said Dink pleasantly. "I know all you want to say—found it out myself—it's all in one word—swelled head!"
"Oh!" said Tough deprecatingly, now that Dink had turned accuser.
"I've been a little, fluffy ass!" said Dink, marvelously stimulated to repentance by the episode which had gone before. "But that's over. My head's subsiding."
"What?"
The two burst into sympathetic laughter.
"You—you didn't mind my sailing into you, old horse?" said Tough.
"Not now."
McCarty looked mystified.
"Tough," said Dink with a queer look, "if you had smoked that black devil and I hadn't—all would have been over between us. As it is——"
"Well?" said Tough.
"As it is—Tough, here's my hand—let's swear an eternal friendship!"
"Put it there!"
"I say, Tough——"
"What?"
"Now, on your honor—did you ever smoke a cigar before?"
"Never," said McCarty. "And I'll never smoke another. So help me."
"Nor I. I say, what was that name?"
"Invincibles."
"That's where we should have stopped!"
"Dink, I begin to feel a little chilly."
"Tough, that's a good sign; let's up."
Arm in arm, laughing uproariously, they went, still a little shaky, back toward the school.
"I say, Tough," said Dink, throwing his arm affectionately about the other's shoulders. "I've been pretty much of a jackass, haven't I?"
"Oh, come, now!"
"I'm afraid I'm not built for a sport," said Dink, with a lingering regret. "But I say, Tough——"
"What?"
"I may be the prodigal son, but you're the devil of a moral lecturer, you are!"
One Wednesday afternoon, as Dink was lolling gorgeously on hiswindow-seat, sniffing the alert air and waiting for the moment to go skipping over to the 'Varsity field for the game with a visiting school, a voice from below hailed him:
"Oh, you, Rinky Dink!"
Stover languidly extended his head and beheld Tough McCarty.
"Hello there, Dink."
"Hello yourself."
"Come over to the Woodhull and meet my family."
"What!" said Dink in consternation.
"They're over for the game. Hurry up now and help me out!"
Dink tried frantically to call him back, but Tough, as though to shut off a refusal, disappeared around the house. Dink returned to the room in a rage.
"What's the matter?" said the Tennessee Shad.
"I've got to go over and meet a lot of women," said Dink in disgust. "Confound Tough McCarty! That's a rotten trick to play on me. I'll wring his neck!"
"Go on now, make yourself beautiful!" said the Tennessee Shad, delighted. "Remember the whole school will be watching you."
"Shut up!" said Dink savagely, making the grand toilet, which consisted in putting on a high collar, exchanging his belt for a pair of suspenders and donning a pair of patent-leathers. "The place for women is at home! It's an outrage!"
He tied his necktie with a vicious lunge, ran the comb once through the tangled hair, glanced at his hands, decided that they would pass muster, slapped on his hat and went out, kicking the door open.
At the Woodhull, Tough hailed him from his window. Dink went up, bored and rebellious. The door opened, he found himself in Tough McCarty's room in the vortex of a crowd of fellow-sufferers. Over by the window-seat two fluffy figures, with skirts and hats on, were seated. He shook hands with both; one was Mrs. McCarty, the other was the daughter, he wasn't quite sure which. He said something about the delight which the meeting afforded him, and, gravitating into a corner, fell upon Butsey White, with whom he gravely shook hands.
"Isn't this awful?" said Butsey in a confidential whisper.
"Frightful!"
"What the deuce's got into Tough?"
"It's a rotten trick!"
"Let's hook it."
"All right. Slide toward the door."
But at this moment, when deliverance seemed near, Tough bore down and, taking Stover by the arm, drew him aside.
"I say, stick by me on this, old man," he said desperately. "Take 'em to the game with me, will you?"
"To the game!" cried Dink in horror. "Oh, Tough, come now, I say, I'm no fusser. I'm tongue-tied and pigeon-toed. Oh, I say, old man, do get some one else!"
But as Tough McCarty kept a firm grip on the lapel of his coat Dink suddenly found himself, with the departure of the other guests, a helpless captive. The first painful scraps of conversation passed in a blur. Before he knew it he was crossing the campus, actually walking, in full view of the school, at the side of Miss McCarty.
Her unconsciousness was paralyzing, perfectly paralyzing! Dink, struggling for a word in the vast desert of his brain, was overwhelmed with the ease with which his companion ran on. He stole a glance under the floating azure veil and decided, from the way the brilliant blueparasol swung from her hand, that she must be a woman of the world—thirty, at least.
He extracted his hands precipitately from the trousers pockets in which they had been plunged and buttoned the last button of his coat. Somehow, his hands seemed to wander all over his anatomy, like jibs that had broken loose. He tried to clasp them behind his back, like the Doctor, or to insert one between the first and second button of his coat, the characteristic pose of the great Corsican, according to his history. For a moment he found relief by slipping them, English fashion, into his coat pockets; but at the thought of being detected thus by the Tennessee Shad he withdrew them as though he had struck a hornet's nest.
The school, meanwhile, had gamboled past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Boru grinning at him from the crowd, and showed them his fist with a threatening gesture.
Then the game began and he was seated by Miss McCarty, unutterably relieved that the tension of the contest had diverted the entire attention of the school from his particular sufferings.
The excitement of the play for the first time gave him an opportunity to study his companion. His first estimate was undoubtedly correct; she was plainly a woman of the world. No one else could sit at such perfect ease, the cynosure of so many eyes. Her dress was some wonderful creation, from Paris, no doubt, that rustled with an alluring sound and gave forth a pleasant perfume.
The more he looked the more his eye approved. She was quite unusual—quite. She had style—a very impressive style. He had never before remembered any one who held herself quite so well, or whose head carried itself so regally. There was something Spanish, too, about her black hair and eyes and the flush of red in her cheeks.
Having perceived all this Dink began to recover from his panic and, with a desire to wipe out his past awkwardness, began busily to search for some subject with which gracefully to open up the conversation.
At that moment his eye fell upon his boot carelessly displayed and, to his horror, beheld therea gaping crack. This discovery drove all desire for conversation at once out of his head. By a covert movement he drew the offending shoe up under the shadow of the other.
"You hate this, don't you?" said a laughing voice.
He turned, blushing, to find Miss McCarty's dark eyes alive with amusement.
"Oh, now, I say, really——" he began.
"Of course, you loathe being dragged out this way," she said, cutting in. "Confess!"
Dink began to laugh guiltily.
"That's better," said Miss McCarty approvingly. "Now we shall get on better."
"How did you know?" said Dink, immensely mystified.
Miss McCarty wisely withheld this information, and before he knew it Dink was in the midst of a conversation, all his embarrassment forgot. The game ended—it had never been really important—and Dink found himself, actually to his regret, moving toward the Lodge.
There, as he was saying good-by with a Chesterfieldian air, Tough plucked him by the sleeve.
"I say, Dink, old man," he said doubtfully, "I'd like you to come over and grub with us. But I don't want to haul you over, you know——"
"My dear boy, I should love to!" said Dink, squeezing his arm eagerly.
"Honest?"
"Straight goods!"
"Bully for you!"
He had three-quarters of an hour to dress before dinner. He went to his room at a gallop, upsetting Beekstein and Gumbo on his volcanic way upward. Then for half an hour the Kennedy was thrown into a turmoil as the half-clothed figure of Dink Stover flitted from room to room, burrowed into closets, ransacked bureaus and departed, bearing off the choicest articles of wearing apparel. Meanwhile, the corridors resounded with such unintelligible cries as these:
"Who's got a collar, fourteen and a half?"
"Darn you, Dink, bring back my pants!"
"Who swiped my blue coat?"
"Who's been pulling my things to pieces?"
"Hi there, bring back my shoes!"
"Dinged if he hasn't gone off with my cuff buttons, too!"
"Oh you robber!"
"Body snatcher!"
"Dink, the fusser!"
"Who'd have believed it!"
Meanwhile, Dink, returning to his room laden with the spoils of the house, proceeded to adornhimself on the principle of selection, discarding the Gutter Pup's trousers for the gala breeches of the Tennessee Shad, donning the braided cutaway of Lovely Mead's in preference to an affair of Slush Randolph's which was too tight in the chest.
The Tennessee Shad, the Gutter Pup and Dennis de Brian de Boru watched the proceedings, brownie fashion, across the transom, volunteering advice.
"Why, look at Dink wash!"
"It's a regular annual, isn't it?"
"Look out for my pants!"
"I say, Dink, your theory's wrong. You want to begin by parting your hair—soak it into place, you know."
Stover, struck by this expert advice, approached the mirror and seized his comb and brush with determination. But the liberties of a rebellious people, unmolested for sixteen years, were not to be suddenly abolished. The more he brushed the more the indignant locks rose up in revolt. He broke the comb and threw it down angrily.
"Wet your hair," said the Tennessee Shad.
"Soak it in water," said the Gutter Pup.
"Soak it in witch-hazel," said Dennis. "It will make it more fragrant."
Dink hesitated:
"Won't it smell too much?"
"Naw. It evaporates."
Stover seized the bottle and inundated his head, made an exact part in the middle and drew the sides back in the fashion of pigeon wings.
"Now clap on a dicer," said the Gutter Pup approvingly, "and she'll come up and feed from your hand."
"Are you really in love?" said Dennis softly.
Stover, ignoring all comments, tied a white satin four-in-hand with forget-me-not embossings, which had struck his fancy in Fatty Harris' room, and inserted a stick-pin of Finnegan's.
"You ought to have a colored handkerchief to stick in your breast pocket," said the Gutter Pup, who began to yield to the excitement.
"Up his sleeve is more English, don't you know," said Dennis.
Stover stood brazenly before the mirror, looking himself over. The scrubbing he had inflicted on his face had left red, shining spots in prominent places, while his hair, slicked back and plastered down, gave him somewhat the look of an Italian barber on a Sunday off. He felt the general glistening effect without, in his innocence, knowing the remedy.
"Dink, you are bee-oo-tiful!" said Dennis.
"Be careful how you sit down," said the Tennessee Shad, thinking of the trousers.
"How are the shoes?" asked the Gutter Pup solicitously.
"Tight as mischief," said Dink, with a wry face.
"Walk on your heels."
Stover, with a last deprecating glance, opened the door and departed, amid cheers from the contributing committee.
When he arrived at the Lodge the dusky waitress who opened the door started back, as he dropped his hat, and sniffed the air. He went into the parlor, spoiling his carefully-planned entrance by tripping over the rug.
"Heavens!" said Tough, "what a smell of witch-hazel. Why, it's Dink. What have you been doing?"
Stover felt the temperature rise to boiling.
"We had a bit of a shindy," he said desperately, trying to give it a tragic accent, "and I bumped my head."
"Well, you look like a skinned rat," said Tough to put him thoroughly at his ease.
The angel, however, came to his rescue with solicitous inquiries and with such a heavenly look that Stover only regretted that he could not appear completely done up in bandages.
They went in to dinner, where Dink was sooverwhelmed by the vision of Miss McCarty in all her transcendent charms that the effort of swallowing became a painful physical operation.
Afterward, Tough and his mother went over to Foundation House for a visit with the Doctor, and Dink found himself actually alone, escorting Miss McCarty about the grounds in the favoring dusk of the fast-closing twilight.
"Let's go toward the Green House," she said. "Will you take my cloak?"
The cloak settled the perplexing question of the hands. He wondered uneasily why she chose that particular direction.
"Are you sure you want to go there?" he said.
"Quite," she said. "I want to see the exact spot where the historic fight took place."
Stover moved uneasily.
"Dear me, what's the matter?"
"I never go there. I hate the place."
"Why?"
"I was miserable there," said Dink abruptly. "Hasn't Tough told you about it?"
"Tell me yourself," said the angelic voice.
Stover felt on the instant the most overpowering desire to confide his whole life's history, and being under the influence of a genuine emotion as well as aided by the obliterating hour, he began straight forward to relate the story of hismonths of Coventry in tense, direct sentences, without pausing to calculate either their vividness or their effect. Once started, he withheld nothing, neither the agony of his pride nor the utter hopelessness of that isolation. Once or twice he hesitated, blurting out:
"I say, does this bore you?"
And each time she answered quickly:
"No, no—go on."
They went back in the fallen night to the campus, and there he pointed out the spot where he had stood and listened to the singing on the Esplanade and made up his mind to return. All at once, his story ended and he perceived, to his utter confusion, that he had been pouring out his heart to some one whose face he couldn't see, some one who was probably smiling at his impetuous confidence, some one whom he had met only a few hours before.
"Oh, I say," he said in horror, "you must think me an awful fool to go on like this."
"No."
"You made me tell you, you know," he said miserably, wondering what she could think of him. "I never talked like this before—to any one. I don't know what made me confide in you."
This was untrue, for he knew perfectly well what had led him to speak. So did she and,knowing full well what was working in the tense, awkward boy beside her, she had no feeling of offense, being at an age when such tributes, when genuine, are valued, not scorned.
"I can just feel how you felt—poor boy," she said, perhaps not entirely innocent of the effect of her words. "But then, you have won out, haven't you?"
"I suppose I have," said Stover, almost suffocated by the gentleness of her voice.
"Charlie's told me all about the rest," she said. "Every one looks up to you now—it's quite a romance, isn't it?"
He was delighted that she saw it thus, secretly wondering if she really knew every point that could be urged in his favor.
"I suppose I'll kick myself all over the lot to-morrow," he said, choosing to be lugubrious.
"Why?" she said, stopping in surprise.
"For talking as I've done."
"You don't regret it?" she said softly, laying her hand on his arm.
Stover drew a long breath—a difficult one.
"No, you bet I don't," he said abruptly. "I'd tell you anything!"
"Come," she said, smiling to herself, "we must go back—but it's so fascinating here, isn't it?"
He thought he had offended her and was in a panic.
"I say, you did not understand what I meant."
"Oh, yes, I did."
"You're not offended?"
"Not at all."
This answer left Stover in such a state of bewilderment that all speech expired. What did she mean by that? Did she really understand or not?
They walked a little way in silence, watching the lights that fell in long lines across the campus, hearing through the soft night the tinkling of mandolins and the thrumming of guitars, a vibrant, feverish life that suddenly seemed unreal to him. They were fast approaching the Lodge. A sudden fear came to him that she would go without understanding what the one, the only night had been in his life.
"I say, Miss McCarty," he began desperately.
"Yes."
"I wish I could tell you——"
"What?"
"I wish I could tell you just what a privilege it's been to meet you."
"Oh, that's very nice."
He felt he had failed. He had not expressed himself well. She did not understand.
"I shall never forget it," he said, plunging ahead.
She stopped a little guiltily and looked at him.
"You queer boy," she said, too pleasantly moved to be severe. "You queer, romantic boy! Why, of course you're going to visit us this summer, and we're going to be good chums, aren't we?"
He did not answer.
"Aren't we?" she repeated, amused at a situation that was not entirely strange.
"No!" he said abruptly, amazed at his own audacity; and with an impulse that he had not suspected he closed the conversation and led the way to the Lodge.
When at last he and Tough were homeward bound he felt he should die if he did not then and there learn certain things. So he began with Machiavellian adroitness:
"I say, Tough, what a splendid mother you've got. I didn't get half a chance to talk to her. I say, how long will she be here?"
"They're going over to Princeton first thing in the morning," said Tough, who was secretly relieved.
A button on the borrowed vest popped with Stover's emotion.
"How did you get on with Sis?"
"First rate. She's—she's awful sensible," said Dink.
"Oh, yes, I suppose so."
"I say," said Dink, seeing that he made no progress, "she's been all around—had lots of experience, hasn't she?"
"Oh, she's bounded about a bit."
"Still, she doesn't seem much older than you," said Dink craftily.
"Sis—oh, she's a bit older."
"About twenty-two, I should say," said Dink hopefully.
"Twenty-four, my boy," said Tough unfeelingly. "But I say, don't give it away; she'd bite and scratch me all over the map for telling."
Stover left him without daring to ask any more questions—he knew what he wanted to know. He could not go to his room, he could not face the Tennessee Shad, possessor of the trousers. He wanted to be alone—to wander over the unseen earth, to gulp in the gentle air in long, feverish breaths, to think over what she had said, to grow hot and cold at the thought of his daring, to reconstruct the world of yesterday and organize the new.
He went to the back of chapel and sat downon the cool steps, under the impenetrable clouds of the night.
"She's twenty-four, only twenty-four," he said to himself. "I'm sixteen, almost seventeen—that's only seven years' difference."
When Stover awoke the next morning it was to the light of the blushingday. He thought of the events of the night before and sprang up in horror. What had he been thinking of? He had made an ass of himself, a complete, egregious ass. What had possessed him? He looked at himself in the glass and his heart sunk at the thought of what she must be thinking. He was glad she was going. He did not want to see her again. He would never visit Tough McCarty. Thank Heaven it was daylight again and he had recovered his senses.
Indignant at every one, himself most of all, he went to chapel and to recitations, profoundly thankful that he would not have to face her in the mocking light of the day. That he never could have done, never, never!
As he left second recitation Tough McCarty joined him.
"I say, Dink, they both wanted to be remembered to you, and here's a note from Sis."
"A note?"
"Here it is."
Stover stood staring at a violet envelope, inscribedin large, flowing letters: "Mr. John H. Stover."
Then he put it in his pocket hastily and went to his room. Luckily the Tennessee Shad was poaching in the village. He locked the door, secured the transom and drew out the note. It was sealed with a crest and perfumed with a heavenly scent. He held it in his hand a long while, convulsively, and then broke the seal with an awkward finger and read: