“I’m to wind up the day by attending that ‘feed’ to-night at Mrs. Whitlock’s on Whitney Avenue. I wish you’d received an invitation, for we could go together.”
“You mean I’d go first, and an hour later you would come tagging along behind.”
“Now, see here! Don’t throw that at me any more. I know I’m slow, but the fault hasn’t always been mine. When I was late at Thurlow’s, it was the fault of my watch. The confounded idiot who overhauled it for me ruined it.”
“And that other time at Mrs. Throckmorton’s?”
Bert picked up his guitar and began to strum it. Finally he put it down.
“Confound you! Why do you look at me that way? If reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I wouldn’t give you a single one. I know I’ve been late a good many times, but it will not happen this evening.”
Dashleigh was fast earning for himself the reputation of being the champion procrastinator of Yale; not because he desired to be slow, but through laziness and his inability to tear himself away from the particular enjoyment in hand. For this reason, whenever he began to strum and sing, which was often, he was likely to forget there were such things as lessons and classes. When talking to a group on the campus, he was slow to tear himself away, if the subject of the conversation was interesting. If he made a call which he enjoyed, he was almost sure to prolong it beyond endurance. Yet he was withal so light-hearted and jolly, so genuinely unselfish, and so pleasant a companion, that he was universally liked.
“I’ll be on time this evening,” he said; then he put away the guitar and dived into some books, suddenly remembering that there was a great quantity of unlearned lore which it behooved him to stow in his brain without delay if he did not want to be dropped or get an awfully low rating.
Then he proceeded to forget all about the “feed” at Mrs. Whitlock’s, and did not remember it again until nearly eight o’clock that evening. It is probable he would not have recalled it then but for a remark made by Jeffreys.
Jeffreys was a freshman, who, with other freshmen, had dropped into Bert’s rooms for a jolly hour or so that evening, after Dick Starbright had gone out. Jeffreys was “a jolly dog,” and so likewise was each of his companions, and Bert was having such a good time that the minutes and the hours slipped by almost unnoticed.