I rose and circled the room, inanely surveying "this comfort" that seems to offend Dibdin, though he likes well enough to sprawl in my best arm-chair. The books, the rugs, the fire, the alluring chairs, the happy hours that I have spent here seemed to crowd about me like the ghosts of familiars, praying to be not driven from their haunts.
"Then why the devil," I demanded accusingly, pausing before him, "did you encourage me and praise my little papers and bits of work in college when you were teaching me?"
"Trying to teach you," he corrected placidly. "You've never been a teacher in a large fashionable college, my boy. When most of your so-called students are taking your course because it is reported to be a snap, so they can spend their evenings at billiards, musical comedies, or the like, any young devil with a ray of intellectual interest becomes the teacher's golden-haired boy. Even teachers are human. You'll admit you haven't set even so much as your own ink-well on fire as yet."
"All that is beside the point," I returned irritably. "Here I am in the devil of a fix and you are talking like Job's comforters."
"Yes," he agreed, "I suppose I am. But in the end it was not the comforters but events that pulled Job up. Await events with resignation and expectancy, Randolph, my lad, and play the game. Stake your coin and wait until the wheel stops and see what happens."
"A fine teacher you are!" I laughed at him, albeit mirthlessly.
"No good at all," he assented cheerfully, knocking his pipe against the ash tray and pocketing the noisome thing. "And didn't I chuck teaching the minute events made it possible? Events, my boy; they are the teacher and the deities to tie to. Set up a little altar to the great god Event—right here in your perfumed little temple. That's what I should do," he concluded, muttering into his beard.
"Incidentally," he added, "I'm getting extraordinarily hungry."
"Oh, sorry," I murmured. "Glad you're here to eat with me, anyway. It enables me to put off breaking the news of my coming marriage to Griselda."
"What—you haven't told her yet?" shouted Dibdin, sitting up in his chair. "That fine, upright Highland lassie? Then you're no disciple of mine! Face things with courage and face 'em fairly, Randolph. Go and tell her now! I'll wait here with my highly moral support."