“Well, what else is it? Come! Out with it.”
“Do you think our people or the Whitneys would like it if they knew we are intimate with her?”
“They’d not die of it, I expect.”
“I don’t like her, Tod. It is not a nice thing of her to allow the play and the betting, and to have all those fellows there when they choose to go.”
Tod took his shoulder from the mantelpiece, and sat down to his imposition: one he had to write for having missed chapel.
“You mean well, Johnny, though you are a muff.”
Later in the day I met Dr. Applerigg. He signed to me to stop. “Mr. Ludlow, I find that what you told me this morning was true. And I withdraw every word of condemnation that I spoke. I wish I had never greater cause to find fault than I have with you, in regard to this matter. Not that I can sanction your being out so late, although the plea of excuse be a dying man. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. It shall not occur again.”
Down at the house in Stagg’s Entry, that evening, Mrs. Cann met me on the stairs. “One of the great college doctors was here to-day, sir. He came up asking all manner of questions about you—whether you’d been here till a’most midnight yesterday, and what you’d stayed so late for, and—and all about it.”