“Out with it, man. I may as well know.”
“Well, some say—but only some—that’s why you’ve been going about so much by yourself!”
“To go off on the spree alone?”
Chips nodded. “You see, you often refused to go out even with me,” he said reproachfully; not as though he believed the worst himself, but in a tone of excuse for those who did.
Jan could only stare. His unsociability had been due of course to his unpopularity with his Eleven, his estrangement from Evan, and his delicacy about falling back on Chips. And even Chips could not see that for himself, but saw if anything with the other idiots! This was too much for Jan; it made him look more embittered than was wise if he still wished to be taken as the only villain of the piece. But the fact was that for the moment he was forgetting to act.
“Solitary drinking!” he ejaculated. “Bad case, isn’t it?”
“It isn’t a case at all,” returned Chips, looking him in the face. “I don’t believe a word of the whole thing! Even if it’s true that you went out to Yardley to meet Mulberry——”
“Who say’s that?”
“Oh, it’s one of the things that’s got about. But I can jolly well see that if you did go to meet him it wasn’t on your own account!”
Confound old Chips! He was looking as if he could fairly see into a fellow’s skull, and very likely making a fellow look in turn as big a fool as he felt!