“Oh come, Prescott,” Frank said, warmly, “that is not like you. I have known Fred for many years, and I believe him to be a very straightforward fellow. Disagreeable and cantankerous if you like, but a good fellow in the main. In his way he reminds me, although he is as straight as an arrow, of deformed people. They are generally kind-hearted, but they are often extremely sensitive. They imagine all sorts of slights where none are intended, and are not unfrequently very bitter in their remarks on those to whom nature has been more bountiful than to themselves. So with Fred; I am sure he feels it very much that he looks a mere boy, and it makes him irritable and snappish.”
“I have no doubt there is a good deal in what you say, Frank; but I confess that somehow or other I distrust as much as I dislike him.”
“He’s a chip of the evil one,” Teddy Drake muttered to himself, “and there are no two ways about it.”
“Now, Drake,” Frank said, “help me to push the table back, and let’s have a pipe. Another fortnight and we shall be going down; now the races are over I shall be glad to be away.”
“I am going to stop up and read,” Teddy Drake said, disconsolately. “My coach says that I never open a book when the men are up, and that my only chance is in the vacations, when there is nothing to do. I am afraid he’s about right; and I’ve made up my mind to stick to it. I shall run up to town and see the ‘’Varsity,’ of course, but that’s all the holidays I mean to take.”
“Look here, Drake,” Frank said; “the best thing you can do is to come and stay for the week with me. My guardian is a capital old fellow, and there’s lots of room in the house.”
“I should like it of all things, Frank; but does he object to smoke, because I couldn’t do without that?”
“He wouldn’t like it in the breakfast-room,” Frank laughed; “but he smokes himself in his study, and I have a special smoking-room upstairs.”
“In that case, Frank, I shall be delighted. That guardian of yours must be a trump. I wish my father saw things in the same reasonable light. He’s always down upon me about smoking; but I am afraid he will never cure me of it.”
“I am afraid not, Teddy. Well, you can smoke as much as you like while you are with us.”