This was unexpected, and Pike hesitated.
"I don't care to get myself into trouble with Badger. He is of the bulldog, pugilistic type, and the first thing he would do would be to assault me like the bully he is. I have given you the warning. You can get all the proof you want. Probably you would never have heard of this until too late, if I had not voluntarily brought you the story."
"You are right," Lee admitted. "Perhaps that would be asking too much."
"I have struck the blow, Badger," Donald Pike muttered, as he left the handsome home of the Lees. "You will find it more of a knock-down, I fancy, than if I had hit you between the eyes with my fist. Nobody ever walks roughshod over Don Pike and gets off without suffering for it. You will hear something drop pretty soon."
And so, chuckling, he took his way to the street-car line, and returned to the campus and the Yale jollification.
The Kansan had accompanied Winnie Lee home that evening, as usual. The hour was late, and he did not enter the house, but kissed her good-night at the gate.
"Good-night and pleasant dreams, sweetheart!" he said as he turned to go.
His heart was light, for he and Winnie had enjoyed a long and loving talk on the way home, and throughout the evening there had been no untoward incident to mar his pleasure. He had noticed Donald Pike's absence, and had been glad of it, but he merely supposed Pike kept away because of the row of the previous evening. If there are such things as premonitions of coming trouble, certainly they did not distress Badger that night. Winnie was also in a happy frame of mind as she tripped lightly up the steps and entered the house.
Inza and Elsie had returned some time before. As she had expected, they had retired to their rooms. She was surprised, however, to find her father waiting for her in the sitting-room, which was brightly lighted. As she came into the room, she saw something ominous in his face. She thought she was to be lectured for remaining out so late.
"Sit down, Winnie," he said. "I want to have a talk with you."