We were crossing the great hall in the direction of the beautiful dining-room beyond—Elizabethan, I think Frances said it was. We all paused expectantly as Billings rolled down the stairs in his usual jolly, elephantine way. And then on the landing appeared an apparition—not only an apparition, but, by Jove, a scarecrow, as well!
Professor Doozenberry, blandly smiling—his rail-like figure shrouded flabbily in one of Billings' largest and loudest suits! Billings went through the form of introductions, chuckling idiotically the while. But the professor scarcely noticed any one but the frump.
"Don't wait, Wilkes," Billings directed. His nod beckoned me aside.
"Gentleman sulking in his tent over here I want you to meet," he said. And I followed him to the library. A figure pacing the floor turned sharply. By Jove, it was the chauffeur, and how he did scowl at me!
"Now, young man," said Billings sternly, "perhaps you'll have the nerve to tell me before Mr. Lightnut himself that you were his guest on your way home from Harvard."
"I certainly was!" He made the statement, chin up and eyes blazing. "I was his guest at the Kahoka Wednesday night, and he knows it."
Billings looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't bother denying it, old man," he said. "It's all right."
"Oh, but I say—it isn't!" I exclaimed in disgusted amaze. "Dashed impertinence, you know—never saw this fellow before the morning at the—er—boat, and day before yesterday when I—" I halted, remembering.
But the fellow was shaking his finger at me.