"I swore I wouldn't go home," flushed the boy, "until at least I'd had something to eat! You know what college feeds are, a cent's worth of salad and the juice of one cracker? Your daughter laughed. She thought it was funny. 'Oh, what a pity,' she said, 'that you can't have the cold roast chicken that's up in my room!' 'Where is your room?' I asked. I was laughing too. 'Oh, just round the corner in the next building,' she said. 'Trot along over with me and if nobody's round I'll scoot upstairs and toss it down to you!' It was further than I thought," said the boy. "And very nice. Just a two-minute cut across the campus, but stars, you know, and a crunch of snow, and the funny fat shapes of the orchestra instruments running for their train. And Lord but I was hungry! But when we got to the dormitory there were too many people round, it seemed, too many lights, too much passing, not a single shadow in the whole 15 world apparently that was big enough to toss a roast chicken into—let alone hide my great hulking shape. 'I just darsn't!' said your daughter. 'Somebody surely would see me, a matron or a proctor or the night watchman or some body!' And all of a sudden," flushed the boy, "it seemed to me so absolutely idiotic that a girl who'd never done any harm in her life should be shut up in a place where she couldn't even proffer food to a starving friend or finish out a dance or do any other decent normal thing just because some cranky old dame had other ideas. 'Well, there's no old dame who owns me!' I said. So if you're afraid to go get the chicken I'll come and get it myself!' 'Yes—I can— see you!' laughed your daughter. She was standing on the step as she spoke and she had on something very red and sort of cunning with a hood all black fur around her face and as she tilted up her chin to the light it looked as though even her hair was laughing at you. 'Well, I'm coming!' I laughed back. 'You darsn't!' she said. In an hour I was there! Oh, of course, I know I oughtn't to have done it!" conceded the boy. "But upon my 16 soul I swear I didn't think anything about it except that it was putting something over on some of those old dames! All this fuss about it's being a girl's room never entered my head for a moment I tell you! I've always had such an awful lot of girl cousins tumbling around. And it was all so darned easy after the moon went down! Such a nifty fire-escape and the toughest sort of an old wisteria vine and——"
"Was—she expecting you?" asked the man.
"No,—that was the trouble," flushed the boy. "Maybe at first she had wondered a bit if I'd really have the nerve—I don't know. But by the time I'd got there she'd started for bed. Was in her wrapper, I mean, with her hair down. Bare feet, you know, and all that sort of thing. And when I opened the window and slipped in across the edge she started to scream. Knew who I was all at once and all that—but the scream got started first. And I knew, of course, that wouldn't do, so I jumped and caught her in my arms to try and smother it out. And the door opened—and in walked President Merriwayne herself. I don't know what she 17 was doing there in that dormitory at that time of night. It may have been just accident or somebody may have overheard us fooling out on the front steps the hour before—I don't know. It just happened—that's all," said the boy. "And there was an awful scene, of course. Things said, I mean, that I shouldn't have supposed a woman would say to a young girl. And two or three teachers or proctors came running in. And there was a faculty meeting later of course. And somebody blabbed to a chambermaid and the chambermaid blabbed to somebody else. And a reporter got hold of it and——"
"And a reporter got hold of it?" said the man.
"Yes," shivered the boy.
"Pictures?" asked the man.
"Yes," said the boy.
"Pretty horrid?" said the man.
"Very horrid," said the boy.
For an instant there seemed to be no sound at all in the room except the sound of flame sucking at the birch juices on the hearth.