"By Jove, but that was like old 'Bee-trice' to send me down here into a hornet's nest," he thought. "I'll have to get square with them somehow before the lecture or it will never come off. I assure you I didn't know anything about the article," he said aloud to Judy. "I only came to accommodate Miss Slammer. She told me yesterday at the office she was ill."
"Then you aren't a lecturer or a writer?" broke in Judy.
"Miss Slammer and I work on the same paper. Didn't she say that in the letter?"
Judy shook her head.
"I'm afraid you'll think I'm an impostor, Miss Kean, but I had no intention of sailing under false colors. I think I'd better take the next train back to New York and give up the lecture. It would be better to run away before I'm frozen out, don't you think so?"
Judy was silent for a moment. Her rage against Mr. James Lufton had entirely disappeared and she again had that feeling that she would like to protect him from the wrath to come.
"What is a 'polite freeze-out' exactly?" Jimmy asked.
"Well, while you lecture, you are to look into rows of stony faces and when you finish, there is not to be a word spoken, not a single handclap, nothing but stillness as the girls file out of the hall."
Jimmy laughed.
"A sort of glacial exit, I suppose. It makes me chilly to think of it. Miss Slammer had a lucky escape."