"No," Percy shot out. "Bingley told me all he knew; but they wouldn't let him catch much of it, because he's left the gang"—
David's feet by this time were flying over the Campus, so that Percy was obliged to shout the remainder of the sentence after him. The consequence was that several heads were popped out of as many windows in the long gray dormitory fronting the Campus, their owners all engaged in the pleasing duty of staring at Percy and the flying figure across the grass.
"Now I'm in for it, for there's Dobbs, I vow," exclaimed Percy to himself, in dismay; "he'll guess I've given Dave warning," and he tried to strike a careless attitude, picking off his glasses to hold them up and gaze long and earnestly through them into the nearest tree.
"You can't come it," jeered Dobbs, from his window. "No birdsnesting, I promise you, Whitney; ha, ha!" And the other heads popped farther out than ever, to add a few hisses.
Percy, maddened by the failure of his plan to divert suspicion, now lost his head entirely, and sticking his eyeglasses on again, ran off like lightning to his room, followed by "Little coward, we'll treat you too—Look out!"
* * * * *
"Well, Jasper; now I'm bound for the next thing—Percy and Joel and David," declared old Mr. King as Jack Loughead was cleverly off; "we are so near, it's a pity not to drop down on them."
"Don't you think you ought to hurry back to Brierly?" asked Jasper, having hard work not to show that he cared anything about it one way or the other.
"No, I don't," answered his father, in his crispest fashion. "No one needs me there; Mrs. Cabot is a host in herself, and those boys may—who knows? At any rate, I must see how they are getting on, so we will go as soon as you can get your things packed and sent home," and the old gentleman glanced around the room at the various keepsakes and family adornings that Jasper had brought with him to make life less lonely while he made a business man of himself.
"Very well, father," said Jasper, he could not trust himself to say more; and for the first time had to hurry away that his father might not see his face. But old Mr. King was the farthest removed from carrying the look of a person holding any interest whatever in Jasper's trouble, for he went on to say, "And I do hope you will get it over with as quickly as possible, Jasper, so that we may be off," then he fell to reading the evening paper with great gusto.