"Um, dare say it has got 'reputation,' all right. I guess, too, there are more crooked things than streets within a couple of miles of Harvard Square, eh? Why, do you know, Francis and a couple of classmates were caught in a raid there one night and lugged off to the station in a patrol—I had to bail 'em out by wire. That's how I know about the place." And, discriminatingly, he selected a fresh cigar and lighted it.
"You—you don't mean they were really arrested?" I faltered.
He nodded grimly through a funnel of smoke. "How could they help being? Why, dammit, they were too drunk to get away!" He settled in his seat with a scowl. "I can tell you it was all I could do to stave off expulsion!"
My jolly head spun. By Jove, Radcliffe girls must have moved on some since my day! Then they were coldly intellectual—went in strong for the earnest life, you know—the serious purpose existence—all that sort of thing. All of us looked on them with more or less awe—that is, except Smithers; he tried some intimate flirtations, one morning with a bunch in the Botanic Gardens and got stung. He said they were "prunes."
But Frances—and "Spot" McGinty's! Surely I had not heard aright.
I faced him earnestly. "I—er—Judge Billings, do I understand you—that is, it can't be that you are speaking of—er—Frances?" I stammered incredulously. "I mean your Frances—surely you are not!"
"I just am!" His jaw set with a snap. "Just who I'm talking about and nobody else, young man! I mean, my Francis—Francis Leslie Billings—who else could I mean?" He almost groaned. "Oh, you don't know Francis!"
Dash it, what they all chorused at me! They seemed pretty positive about it, too, and I was jolly miserable; but looking back now, I somehow think of that moment as being the point where I reached the parting of the what-you-call-'ems. Didn't know what to think, but knew I had to make up my mind right then and there—and for always, don't you know. Knew, of course, that it was just pure luck that Frances cared for me—realized jolly well I wasn't particularly clever and all that, you know; but she didn't seem to mind. It was then that it came to me all of a sudden that the only dashed thing in all the world that I could give her, that she didn't seem to have already from somebody, was—well just trust.
And, by Jove, as soon as I got hold of this perfectly corking idea, I knew I had it for life, and—well, nothing else mattered in all the world, you know!
Meantime, her father was studying me a little oddly and smiling.