“I haven’t got it yet,” replied Marchmont, testily. “I told you I’d pay you when I got the money; you won’t lose it.”
“But I need it now,” continued White, insistently. “I really need it.”
Marchmont laughed. “So do I, and I’ve never seen the time when I didn’t. I can’t keep a dollar two days. If I could, I never should have borrowed that twenty. Don’t worry, you’ll be paid. I’m not trying to cheat you.”
“I don’t suppose you are,” returned White, “but I want the money now. It’s mine and I propose to have it.”
“Oh, you’re going to report me, are you?” exclaimed Marchmont, in a different tone. “That’s about what I might have expected. Here I tutored with you for several weeks at your own price, though you didn’t teach me a blamed thing; and now you come and threaten to report me because I don’t pay spot cash. Why, there are people in New York who could buy up this whole town, who only pay their bills once a year and then merely as a favor. If you report me, you’ll never get a cent out of me; I’d leave school first.”
“I’ve got to have something or I’ll starve,” said White, solemnly. “Pay me that twenty you borrowed, anyway. That was my own money that I had earned and saved. I must have that.”
Marchmont had risen. “Why, I’m going to pay you all of it as soon as I can. You won’t starve; people don’t starve nowadays. You can get credit as well as I can. And don’t fuss about the money; it’ll be all right.”
And White went home to his chilly attic room at old Miss Rolfe’s, which he paid for by tending the furnace and shovelling the paths, and tried to prove to his satisfaction in black and white that by cutting meat out of his dinner four times a week he could save enough to carry him through to the end of the term, when the scholarship payments would be made. He had already been boarding himself for a fortnight, the dining hall having proved too expensive for his shrivelled purse.
CHAPTER XI
BUYING TACKS
Not every one in school was in trouble, as the last chapter would seem to indicate. Tompkins and the Pecks, for example, were not bored by the monotony of life, had no unwelcome visitors descending into their closets by rope ladders, and enjoyed three square meals every day. Since the affair of the rubbers, the Pecks’ dormitory entry had seen days of peace. With Tompkins’s vague threats of retribution still ringing in their ears, the twins had walked circumspectly and left the senior’s dignity unassailed. But with every day of delay in the coming of that retribution the threats were losing effect.