He knew about the boxes in the cellar. The joke was too good for little Pondy to keep, and he had let it out, declaring the fun “immense,” and asking Kenneth to take a “nip” with him. It was not often that Kenneth joined them. He was too busy during the day, and in the evening too tired, he said, when his mother urged him to go over and call. He did go once or twice, and found them playing cards for small stakes, drinking beer and smoking until the room was blue and he could scarcely breathe.
They asked him to take a hand and a drink, or a pipe, as he preferred, but he declined all three, and after sitting awhile, took his leave without a very strong invitation to stay from any of the party.
“He’s no fun at all; don’t smoke, nor play, nor drink, nor enjoy himself,” Pondy said, after Kenneth had gone, and yet in his little soul he felt how infinitely superior to himself Kenneth was, and much the same feeling permeated the crowd, each one of whom felt under restraint when he was with them, and relieved at his absence.
They had followed Hal’s instructions, and were very quiet when at midnight they stole up the outside stairs to their cots in the ball-room. Once, when little Pondy had enjoyed himself too much, he plunged into bed with his clothes on, but was promptly dragged out and made to undress, while he kept saying thickly, “I don’t—call—this—enshoying my—shelf by a —— shight.” After that he kept pretty straight in the ball-room, with the exception of once smoking in bed and setting fire to the sheets. The blaze was extinguished, and as the sheets belonged to Hal, they were taken away, and Mrs. Stannard never knew how near she came to a conflagration. The next morning Pondy complained of a headache, the result, he said, of certain hard blows aimed, he supposed, at the burning sheets, but which by accident missed fire and hit him. A drive would do him good. Not a noisy thing like those they had taken in a carryall, when they had sung college songs and given college yells, which made the people think they were lunatics on their way to the asylum. He’d like a quiet drive with Charlie Browne, after that pretty little bay mare he’d seen going in and out of the deacon’s yard.
“Con, I heard the doctor call her. That’s a funny name for a horse. His girl’s, maybe,” and he looked at Harry, who did not reply at once.
He knew the reason for the horse’s name and respected Kenneth’s confidence so far as not to speak of it to his friends, and especially to Pondy, who had made so many boasts of his conquests.
“And I don’t care for a soul of ’em, except one,” he had said, “and I shouldn’t care for her if she hadn’t sat down on me and called me an insolent little cur when I made some advances to her she didn’t like; tried to take her hand, you know, when we were riding in a diligence near Spezzia after dark.”
“Served you right! Who is she? What’s her name?” was asked, but Pondy shook his head.
“Sha’n’t tell,” he said, “till we have our blow-out and finish Warner’s Safe Cure. Then we’ll each drink to the prettiest girl we ever saw.”
Spying Kenneth just then in the yard, he went out to him and asked for the bay mare for a short drive with Charlie.