"Upon my soul, I don't know," Duggie declared sarcastically, "but I 'd be willing to bet that if I see him first he won't invite you again," he laughed.
Then Berri admitted that Fleetwood's idea was well enough in theory, but doubted if it really worked.
"That tall spook I jollied this evening for a while was exceedingly nice; but I sha'n't dash off and call on him to-morrow. I don't suppose I'll ever see him again," Berri said.
"No, probably not," Duggie assented, "but it's altogether likely that after time has healed the wound left by your indifference, he may find consolation in the companionship of some one else. You may not be able to grasp the fact, Berri, but it is a fact that 'there are others.'" It was in the midst of this that he began to get ready for bed.
"Why don't you open a salon yourself if you think they 're such 'life-sweeteners'?" Berri called after him when he went into his own room.
"When I come to the Law School next year, I'm going to," Duggie shouted back, "but you 'll never see the inside of it; I 'll tell you that right now."
I did n't join in the discussion at all, for I got to thinking how lucky I had been from the first. Mamma overheard an old woman on a piazza say that she made the "young men" change their shoes when it was "snow-in'"—and that was all there was to it. That chance remark led to my living in the same house with Duggie and Berri; and what a difference it has made! Without Berri I never in the world should have known such a lot of people in so short a time; and without Duggie—well, I think I understand what my adviser meant when he said he was glad I knew Duggie.
There has been one Advocate meeting since my election and I thought it was great. All the editors meet in the Advocate President's room on Tuesday evening to hear the Secretary read the manuscripts that have been sent in or collected from the English courses during the week. It took them a long time to settle down to business; in fact no one seemed to want to hear the manuscripts at all—although I secretly thought this would be very interesting—and several fellows made remarks and tried to interrupt (the poetry especially) all the time the Secretary was reading. But he read on in a businesslike voice and never paid any attention to them except once, when he grabbed a college catalogue from the table, and without looking away from the page shied it at a fellow who was repeating the verses the Secretary was trying to read—only repeating them all wrong and making them sound ridiculous. In the case of most of the contributions the fellows began to vote "no" before they had read them half through; but several of them were hard to decide on, and the board had a lively time making up its mind. After the reading we sat around the fire and had beer and crackers and cheese while (as several of the manuscripts expressed it) "the storm howled without."
A few afternoons ago the Secretary (he has such a queer name—it's Duncan Duncan), came to my room to see how much I had done on a story I was writing. It was a little after six o'clock when he got up to go, and as he was on his way to dinner at Memorial he asked me to dine with him. I had never been to Memorial at meal time and was glad of the chance to go. It's a very interesting experience, although I think I prefer the comparative peacefulness of Mrs. Brown's as a usual thing.
We were joined in the Yard by a friend of Duncan's who sits at the same table. Duncan is a thoughtful, rather dreamy kind of person (he writes a lot of poetry for the Advocate), and on the way over he told me how much he enjoyed living at Memorial—that he never got tired of looking up at the stained-glass windows and the severe portraits.