“He! he!” laughed Gunn. “That would be embarrassing, but it would be rather exciting.”
He rose to his feet and threw out his chest.
“I don’t know but you are right,” he nodded. “Since crossing the pond I’ve noticed the ladies glancing my way and smiling on me. In London they smiled at me, and in Scotland the Scottish girls were inclined to give me the eye. I used to be quite a chap with ’em, but since getting married I’ve lived retired and kept away from ’em. I’ll have to look out or some of them will be trying to steal me.”
Buckhart turned a laugh into a severe fit of coughing.
“I’m afraid I’ve taken cold,” he barked.
By this time Dick had Professor Gunn thinking himself really a very captivating old chap with the ladies, and he began to tell how he had found it necessary to dodge them all his life.
“Stop it, pard!” whispered the boy from Texas. “If you don’t let up I’ll sure give myself away to him.”
Thus adjured, Merriwell finally quit egging Zenas on, but he improved an opportunity to slip out of the room and leave the professor relating some of his experiences to Buckhart.
Dick descended to the lower rooms of the inn, entering the one to which they had first been ushered by the landlord.
A man in black clothes was half sitting, half reclining in a big easy-chair that was drawn up before before the fire. Evidently he had been perusing a newspaper, over which, made drowsy by the warmth, he had fallen asleep. The paper was spread over his face.