In his room Larry found Purdick working over a demonstration drawing, and the small one nearly jumped up and flung his arms around the home-comer when he saw who it was that had opened the door.
“Suffering Jehu! I never was so glad to see anybody in my life!” he exclaimed, shoving the drawing-board back on the study table. Then: “They’ve had me fighting mad all day.”
“Who had?” said Larry, dropping into a chair to get back to the old trick of holding his head in his hands.
“Markley and Dugger, and that bunch. They’ve been telling it all over the campus that they saw you last night in a back room at ‘Pat’s Place’ dead drunk! I tried to lick Dugger for saying it, but he carried too big a wallop for me.”
“Huh!” said Larry, looking out between his fingers; “that’s where you got that black eye, was it? You’re a mighty loyal little rat, Purdy, and I only wish you’d been fighting for something worth while. I was in ‘Pat’s Place’ last night, and if I wasn’t drunk, there was something else mighty funny the matter with me. I just waked up a little while ago, and my head feels bigger than a barrel, right now. But what were Markley and Dugger doing in Pat’s?”
“The way they’re telling it, they had been to the Sock and Buskin show, and after it was out they stopped in the Rookery to get an ice-cream soda. As they were passing Pat’s on their way over, some fellow out in front told them that there was one of their college bunkies drunk in a back room. They say they went in and found you lying spread out on a table and so far gone that they thought it would be too much of a job to get you home. So, with the help of the barkeeper and the fellow who had told them, they lugged you out to an old barn in a vacant lot and left you to sleep it off. I didn’t believe ’em, of course. If I had, I’d’ve gone to hunt you up. It’s all a pack of lies, isn’t it? You didn’t drink anything in that miserable dog-hole, did you?”
“Nothing but a glass of cold water.”
“Tell me,” Purdick commanded; and Larry told the whole story, or so much of it as was clear enough to be recalled. Purdick heard him through without interrupting, and then, out of an experience that was wider—and sadder—than any his big-bodied room-mate had ever gone through, he grappled with the mysteries.
“You say the card-room smelled of alcohol and the smell grew stronger: I guess it was meant to. Don’t you know that a person can get drunk just breathing the fumes of the stuff?”
“I didn’t know it,” Larry admitted.