“He’ll expect it, then, next Thursday night; and I hope, for your sake as well as his, that you’ll have it ready for him. Good night!”
Ten minutes after he had left his room, Wolcott opened the door again, walked to the table, and deposited the money upon it. “There’s the twenty,” he said coolly; “he’ll have the rest in another week.”
Laughlin stared; Poole shouted aloud. “How did you do it?” he cried; “shake it out of him?”
“I told him I wanted it, and he gave it to me. He didn’t know White really needed it.”
“What do you say to that, Dave?” demanded Poole, turning with a comical grimace to his companion.
“I say he was lying,” replied Laughlin, quietly.
After the callers had departed, Wolcott sat for some minutes striving to define his opinion of Marchmont and to determine his future attitude toward him. Clearly there were other characteristics to be considered in the fellow than the graceful manners and airs of superior gentility which had so imposed upon the new boy. He was absolutely selfish, indifferent to the rights and happiness of others, and at heart a coward. There was as great a contrast between this weak, self-indulgent character and the rugged, generous, downright honesty of Laughlin as between the two exteriors: the ratio of values was inverse to that of appearances.
“I’m afraid Tommy was nearer right than I that day when he was ranting about a pile of Marchmonts,” he said to himself in no happy frame of mind, as he started to clear up his desk. “I’ve been well taken in by that fellow.”
His Aunt Emmeline’s unanswered letter appeared from under a pile of papers. He opened it again and read it through, then seized his hat and hurried forth.
Two minutes later a hulking six-footer, with face rosy from rapid walking, presented himself at the delivery window of the Seaton library.