“Then what is the matter? You seem to be completely off your trolley, old man. You’re getting freakish.”
“Oh, I suppose so! Rub it in! I had a letter from my mother yesterday. She said she was sorry to give me up, but I had been a terrible disappointment to her. She did hope I would get through college. She was sending me money to get through on, you know. I was a fool! I gambled her money away, and she sent it without letting my father know, for he would have stopped her had he known. Oh, isn’t there a reason why I should feel blue?”
“I think you are inclined to make things out worse than they are, Hodge.”
“Worse! worse! Ha! ha! How could they be any worse? Here my mother, who has clung to me all through everything, is giving up in despair! She thinks I have gone to the dogs.”
“And I suppose you do not write and tell her all the truth?”
“What’s the use?” said Bart, bitterly. “She knows I ran away from college. Do you fancy it would make her feel any better to know I did so because I could not meet the gambling debts I had contracted? In this case, it is better not to tell the truth.”
“I think I will write to your mother, Bart.”
“What for?”
“I have something to tell her.”
“What?”