CHAPTER XII
MR. ALSOP’s DIGNITY
“I’m awfully sorry!” began Mulcahy, vehemently, as soon as the door had closed behind the departing form of Mr. Alsop. “I’m awfully sorry, but I couldn’t help it. There wasn’t any other way out.”
“I suppose not,” answered Archer, with sullen sarcasm.
Mulcahy came round the table and put his hand on Archer’s shoulder. Sam threw it off and edged away.
“Just try to think of it from my side,” urged Mulcahy. “Here I was, caught in the act. If Alsop had wanted to make a row about it, I might have lost my scholarship. They’d all have been down on me, anyway, and it would have been terribly hard to get them over to my side again; while as for you—” He hesitated at this point, not sure how to put his idea into unobjectionable form.
“While as for me,” flamed Archer, “all I get is to have Alsop tell all the rest that I’m a liar and going to the bad as fast as I can. That’s nothing at all!”
“You’re crazy!” answered Mulcahy, smiling compassionately at his companion’s vehemence. “Nothing like that will happen. You’ve a right to smoke if you want to. Alsop understands that. I smoothed out all the difficulty about your telling him that you didn’t. You won’t hear from it again. Alsop won’t think any differently of you from what he always has.”
“No different, but more so,” interjected Sam, bitterly.
“While as for me, why, my whole life plans might be spoiled.”