A twinkle appeared in his eye.
"You've got the cash, Dad. Who'll spend it, if I don't?"
Taking out his book, he began rolling a cigarette.
"Stop that!" exclaimed his father, angrily, "and listen to me. It isn't the money I mind so much as it is the fool style in which you've thrown it away. Where's the thing going to end? That's what I want to know. If you'd only get mad when I talk to you, there'd be some hope for you. But you haven't backbone enough left to get mad. You've smoked it all away."
"Oh, come now, Dad!"
"You ask who'll spend the money. I know mighty well who won't, unless he strikes a new gait. There's plenty of colleges and hospitals to endow, and enough other ways of putting all I've got where it'll do some good. I've worked too hard and too long for my fortune to have a fool scatter it to the winds. You can come down to the hotel with me for supper. After that I'll foot the bills for your little excursion, and then go over alone to see Principal Blodgett. And let me say right now that it'll be a pretty important interview for you."
Lane, Spurling, and Stevens, their tennis over, were starting for their boarding-house. Crossing the campus, they met Percy and his father. The former nodded soberly. Whittington, senior, a cross of court-plaster on his right cheek, passed them without a glance.
"Percy doesn't look very happy," remarked Stevens, when they were at a safe distance.
"Just a passing cloud," grinned Lane. "It takes more than a little thing like junking a thousand-dollar auto to bother Percy. He'll forget all about it before to-morrow."
"See that dreadnought jaw on his father? If I was Percy I'd be kind of scary of that jaw. John P. Whittington isn't a man to stand much monkeying, or I miss my guess."