The psychological moment came for the regular withdrawal. Frank opened his windows with care, donned the old bath-robe which was his armor for the battle intellectual, put on his eye-shade over his straight brown hair, and opened his Pollock. At this hint the others slipped out; only Jimmie Mason lingered, his gaze on the shadowy hills with their faint fringe of dark green, the dregs of his pipe purring in the stillness. Lyman's room-mate was somewhere queening. Lyman himself, pretending to study, looked up from time to time, waiting for the Sophomore to unbosom himself. Frank knew the symptoms.
"Well, Jimmie?" he said at length—one couldn't study with that going on and Frank had his stint to finish.
"It's about my father."
"Drinking again?"
Jimmie only nodded. The smoke went out in his pipe; he knocked the ashes from it and put it away mechanically in the common pipe-rack over the radiator.
"Tell me about it." Frank had closed his book, and was leaning back in his tilted chair, his feet braced in the shelf beneath, his hands clasped over his knees.
"Not much to tell, I guess, no more than you know already. I got a letter from the old lady."
"Your grandmother, eh?"
"Yes. She says something must be done. 'In low saloons,' she says, and I've been sizing it up—and Frank, don't you think I ought to go home?"