“Excuse me—are—are you a professor—sir?” I enquired.
“No,” laughed Brock, “just a theologue, that’s all. I started late, you see.” Then he explained: “You’ll not be able to do any business here on Sunday. The President will see you the first thing in the morning; but you needn’t fear. There’s no turning of you off when you’ve come so far. Just remember that, Brother Priddy. Meanwhile, I think I might be able to place you at a job that will pay your board.”
With a wild leap of the heart, I gasped, thrilled,
“Oh, if you only could!”
“I’m head waiter in the dining-room,” he explained, “we have a place not filled yet. I’ll see you later about it. Better take him in with you,” he announced, turning to Thropper. “Yours is a double room. That’s where the President would put him, anyhow.”
“My, the gas does smell!” I announced, merely to say something as Thropper led me into the dimness of Pungo Hall. “Doesn’t it spoil the food, when it soaks in it?”
Thropper laughed.
“You won’t mind it, after a while. You’ll get so that you won’t notice it. Here’s the room, ‘9’. Come in, Priddy!”
I heard the scraping of a key against the lock, a frosty light overhead showed me where the transom was swung at an angle. Finally there came a click as the key snapped back the bolt, Thropper threw back the door and ushered me in my college room, a double room within a narrow compass of a few feet something. I swept a pair of greedy eyes over this, the first substantial step in my educational ambition.