“Dick,” said Larry, and he tried to say it casually, and couldn’t, “the faculty letter isn’t going to your father. You’re to have another chance.”
For a time Dick didn’t speak or move; just squatted there on the floor with his hands locked over his knees and with queer little twitches coming and going at the corners of his mouth. After a bit he managed to say: “How do you mean?—another chance.”
Rapidly, because he couldn’t trust himself to go at it deliberately, Larry told of his interview with the president, and of the president’s promise to “review” Dick’s case.
“You’ll be conditioned, and you’ll have to make up your classroom work,” he went on, “but we can pull you over that hill all right. And he told me that the letter hadn’t been sent to your father. I guess he was just as sorry about having to send it as you were about having it sent. They think a lot of your father here in Old Sheddon, Dick.”
Slowly Dick got upon his feet, crossed the room, and sat upon the edge of his bed.
“For a minute or so you got me all ‘hope up,’ Larry,” he said soberly. “Goodness knows, I want to stay bad enough, but I can’t. I won’t ask Dad for any more money, and it’s a cinch that I’m not going to let you go to work in Prac. Mechan. and lose out on foot-ball, just to put up for me.”
“Now see here,” Larry was beginning; but just then there was a rap at the door and half a dozen of Dick’s house brothers, Carey Lansing among them, came stringing into the room to drape themselves around on the different pieces of furniture.
“We know all about it, Dick,” said Lansing without preface. “Wally Dixon has spilled the beans all over the place. Here’s how—with the Sheddon series for this red-headed pal of yours.”
Dick rose to the occasion manfully.
“You fellows are all right; you always have been, to me. But I’ve got to go home, just the same.” And then, with his jaw set, he made a clean breast of everything, telling about his debts and winding up with Larry’s offer,—which he wasn’t going to accept—and with his own intention of kicking himself out of the Zeta Omegas.