"Yes, sir." Opdyke's reply came with dutiful promptness, although it was plain to the professor that he had flown quite beyond the limits of the young mind before him. "What do you want me to do with him, though?"
The professor's eyes twinkled, as he dragged himself back to the practical aspects of the case.
"Coax him out of his shell. If he won't come, then haul him out by the ears. Have him in your room and have some other men in there to meet him. Take him about with you. Take him to Mory's, on a thick night there. Show him life, the way you know it. If you must, show him an occasional siren. I can say this to you, Reed, because I have taken pains to find out that your sirens are pretty decent ones, cleaner than most of them. To sum it up, let Scott Brenton see life as you are living it, not as he imagines it from the point of view of the man who never can do anything but sit back in a corner and look on."
Opdyke filled his pipe anew, puffed at it silently, then spoke.
"Beastly tantalizing thing to do," he said. "What in thunder is the use?"
The professor spoke with sudden fervour.
"Much!" he said. "At least, it will teach him, when he's preaching for the Lord, to remember that Mammon isn't always quite so black as he is painted."
And so, on top of Reed Opdyke's other interests, Professor Mansfield laid the burden of Scott Brenton's worldly training. In pointing out the need of it to Opdyke, however, the old professor had been by no means as downright as he seemed. From above his lecture notes and his blowpipes, he kept keen eyes upon the members of his classes. Watching Scott steadily, in those days which followed upon the boy's bitter disappointment, he had seen new lines graving themselves about his lips, lines of decision now, not of worried mal-nutrition, lines that too easily might shape themselves to wilfulness. Scott, recluse that he had been, had also been as steady as a deacon; but the old professor realized that a reaction might come at almost any instant. One outlet, and that the highest one, forbidden him, he might seek other, lower ones in sheer bravado. Forbidden to climb into the Tree of Knowledge of all Good, he might, in revenge, fall greedily upon the Apples of Sodom. Left to himself, no one knew what harpies he might chance upon as comrades, nor what sights they might show him. To prevent all that, to provide him with an outlet which should be as wholesome as it was fresh and sparkling, the professor had given him into the safe hands of Reed Opdyke. It was as he said: he was quite well aware that, although Reed had his sirens, they all were curiously clean ones; in short, that his young Mammon was nobler far than many a senile God.
CHAPTER SIX