"Why do we put up with him?" I asked viciously, for I could see him making Lambert and Webb shout with laughter at the table opposite me.
"I don't know," Collier answered, "I suppose it's his smile. What part of a fowl do you think this is? it looks to me like the neck." He turned it over several times and then called a servant. "Please take this back, and say I have to be very careful what I eat. I keep a list, and this isn't on it. I never saw that joint before," he added to me, and lost all interest in Dennison. I thought it a pity that Collier took so much trouble over what he ate; the sight of that unusual joint made him quite silent and inattentive during the rest of the meal.
I went to his rooms after dinner, as I felt sleepy, and he never did anything on Sunday except sleep, eat, and go to chapel. His room was full of tinted literature, but I never saw him read it, and I believe he bought The Sporting Times on Saturdays so that he could give it to any man who attacked him with conversation on his day of rest. His table was covered by a most miscellaneous dessert, and I asked him if he expected a lot of men.
"Not a soul," he replied, and sank into a chair by the fire. "I have this every Sunday night, because my people pay my common-room bill, and I have to pay everything else out of my allowance. They told me to do myself well, but after this term I expect they will see that this odd sort of arrangement won't work. I can feed a regiment on almonds and raisins without it costing me a sou. Help yourself to coffee, stick the dish of anchovy toast down between us, and if you want to read there are three Sunday papers and a crowd of old magazines."
I sat by the fire and read four short stories to pass the time. Dennison poked his head into the room and withdrew it when he saw me. I congratulated myself upon that little incident, for I felt that if he understood how I hated the sight of him something would have been gained. At nine o'clock I left Collier and went to my rooms to wait for Ward. I did not expect him to be punctual, because I guessed that a dinner given by Bunny Langham would be difficult to leave. He turned up, however, in about half-an-hour, and said he was jolly glad to get away from the Sceptre. "Bunny's all right," he said, "but some of his friends are too much—even for me."
I replied that Bunny was all wrong, and said why I thought so.
"You don't know him," Ward explained; "he would never leave any one in a hole if he thought for a second. He's the most good-natured, weak kind of man on earth, but he would never do the wrong thing. He goes straight over a precious difficult country, for he hasn't got any more will than a rabbit and is as blind as a bat. He will be in trouble to the end of his days, but he will never make any one ashamed of him."
I thought this was rather a glorified conception of the Bunny I knew, so I said nothing.
"You must see that he is a good sort," Ward said.
"Everybody's a good sort," I answered impatiently. "Collier calls the fellow with the green-baize apron who collects the boots a good sort, and some man I met at home, who talked about emperors and kings as if they were all his cousins, declared that the Sultan of Morocco was the best sort he had ever met—when one got to know him."