“Messy! My word! Messy, say you? That’s no name for it. It takes half my time keeping this place picked up. Well, let’s forget my troubles and talk about yours.”
“I haven’t any, I guess. Except that Kilts is down on me just at present and I’m having a bad time with math.”
“Well, you heard about me, didn’t you? Had a terrible falling-out with Old Tige; he got quite—quite insulting Saturday. You see, I—er—neglected to hand in a theme, and he said I’d have to do it by Saturday noon. And I really meant to because, of course, he was quite within his rights, you know. So Friday evening I went over to the library and worked and worked and delved and delved in the—the musty archives getting notes for one of the nicest little themes you ever saw! Oh, I must have worked for ten or fifteen minutes! Armed with my notes I returned here fully intending to sport my oak, as we say in dear old England, and do that theme. But here was Cotton scratching away with his old pen and shuffling his silly feet and making noises in his throat. It was quite impossible to write a theme under such circumstances. So I—well, I didn’t. Says I to myself, I will arise betimes in the morning and do it. Which I did; that is, fairly betimes. But where were my notes? I ask you, Merrow, as man to man, where were my notes? Flown! Decamped! Utterly vanished! So, as there was no time to get more notes, I started in to write a theme on the simple little subject of Walter Scott. It was a—well, a hurried effort, and as it turned out I got Sir Walter mixed up in my mind with Thackeray. Result, disapproval on the part of Mr. Edmund Gaddis; disapproval and hard words. I was patient with him, Merrow, but it was difficult, for he said things no gentleman should say to another. We parted—well, scarcely friends. And I’ve got two themes now hanging over my head instead of one. And only until to-morrow evening to do them.” The Duke sighed and shook his head. “But such is life!”
“Too bad,” murmured Harry sympathetically. “And the dickens of it is that this is no time to push a fellow’s nose to the grindstone. No fellow can do decent work just before the Broadwood game; it isn’t fair to expect it.”
“I wish that silly game was over with,” said The Duke fervently. “Honest, I get so excited and nervous and stirred up about it you’d think I was going to play quarter-back. By the way, Duffey—he rooms with Bert Simms, you know—Duffey says Bert is all up in the air over the game; doesn’t sleep for calling signals all night, and can’t eat.”
Harry looked incredulous. “Why, I saw Simms this morning and talked to him, and he seemed as untroubled as you please.”
“That so? Well, it’s only what I heard. How is Burtis’s arm getting on? I haven’t seen him since Sunday.”
“All right. They’re having a leather cuff made that’s to fit right over the wrist. I didn’t know a simple dislocation could be so bad.”
“What’s the difference between a dislocation and a sprain?” demanded The Duke.
Harry shook his head. “I don’t know. I suppose that when you sprain your ankle you just pull the tendons, don’t you, or the ligaments? And when you dislocate it you throw the bone out of joint.”