"Well, that's no great grief," Phil replied. "Nothing to get fussed up over."
"It was generally understood I was to begin next year. I'm being packed off as a punishment. It seems the family dignity is being compromised by my running rapids in a dugout with a girl."
"Well?" Phil waited patiently.
"Grove put a bug in the governor's ear," Rod dropped allusion for plain facts. "The governor wouldn't have thought of disciplining me. Grove's a damned snob. He has his gang here. He thinks I ought to spend my time entertaining them. He imagines it is a reflection on him that I prefer to play with Mary Thorn. Out of his own messy mind he takes it for granted—the governor would never of his own accord have suggested that I was—that I might—oh, damn! I don't like Grove's filthy insinuations, Phil. And I couldn't talk back to the governor. If it weren't for all these people here, I'd beat Grove up for his pains."
"You're hardly up to that yet," Phil smiled indulgently.
"Don't you fool yourself," Rod declared hotly. "I weigh a hundred and fifty-five stripped. I'm as hard as a rock—and he's mush. You know it, Philip. He's lapped up too much hard liquor, and dallied too much with that woman he keeps in the Bute Street flat to—to stand the gaff very long."
"Good Lord; nothing gets by you," Phil grunted. "How do you know these things?"
"I have eyes and ears," Rod answered. "And I'm not asleep when I'm in town. He had a little blonde in his harem last year. The latest, I understand, is a voluptuous brunette. He has more light loves than some people have servants. By jove, he's the last one that ought to hint to the pater that I need looking after."
"Maybe it was old Spence," Phil observed thoughtfully. "The three of them were confabbing when the governor asked me to find you. Old Spence is rather strait-laced, and you're his especial charge, you know."
"No, Spence is only an echo," Rod said scornfully, "An echo of other men's thoughts, books, history, languages. Old Spence is decent, and he considers me so. Besides, he wouldn't talk himself out of a job any sooner than he had to. There are no more Norquay children for him to cram with predigested mental fodder."