“Didn’t you ever hear of ‘The Mixers’?”
“Just the name; that’s all.”
“Well, you might as well know; it’s all out now. There was a bunch of us, with more money than was good for us, I guess. We’ve been going over the river to a room in the Brandon House to play cards. Night before last the town police raided us. The others all skipped through a window and down the fire-escape, but I was bonehead enough to stand my ground and try to bully it out. For the sake of the college it was kept out of the newspapers, and the police contented themselves with handing me over to the faculty.”
“And you’re the only one to be expelled?”
Dick nodded.
“They gave me a chance that I couldn’t take; said they’d make it suspension to the end of the semester if I’d tell who the others are. It’ll just about break Dad’s heart, Larry.”
“Don’t you know it,” said Larry, with a franker emphasis than he meant to put upon it. Then: “Have you told it all?”
“No; not quite all. I’ve lost money—lots of it. I owe pretty nearly everybody in sight. Worse than that, I’ve used up all my year’s allowance and I’m overdrawn at the bank. I’ll have to wire Dad for money to get home on.”
For a few minutes Larry was just about as badly crushed as Dick seemed to be. That Dick, the chum he loved almost as a brother of his own blood, should make such a frightful smash of himself and his prospects in just a few weeks or months seemed utterly unbelievable. Then there was Dick’s father.... Just here Dick broke in again.