“Well, perhaps not,” assented Kit, temporarily crestfallen. “But I must say that’s a crummy thing of them to do. Fine school spirit, eh!”
“Well, we have been skipping bounds pretty regularly this fall, if I remember correctly.”
“My dear child,” remarked Kit paternally, “when will you learn wisdom? The Doctor carefully distinguishes between moral offenses and offenses against school discipline. Now, bounds are obviously disciplinary and not moral; hence we are mere wandering angels, while those poker fiends are equally hence of the lower regions.”
“Rot!” was the courteous rejoinder. “It is obvious to any but a bonehead like yourself that the Doctor imposed bounds this year for moral reasons, because he had wind that just that sort of thing was going on.”
“Ah!” resumed Kit sarcastically. “I perceive the glimmerings of a conscience. You are getting the remorse for your own sins?”
“Not particularly. I am only objecting to the complacent way in which you shove Carroll and Chapin outside the pale of decency.”
“Well, I’m easy, old boy; I certainly won’t be damned for making pan-cakes in Lovel’s Woods; but I can readily see that Reggie might for playing poker there. But it isn’t so much the poker I object to, as his beastly taste in companions.”
“Thunder and blazes, Kit, what’s it to you who Reggie goes with?”
“Nothing much. But of a kindness warn your room-mate against Arty; he is an awful bounder and always was.”
“Well,” answered Tony, “Reggie knows him better than we do; and it is certainly not my business to give him advice. Come on; let’s quit this jaw, and go in to supper.”