“Custom, Burtis, custom. We’re all slaves to it. In your senior year you have the inestimable privilege of rooming in Dudley. It’s always done and so I did it. Left a perfectly comfortable, well-heated room and went over there to freeze in a little two-by-twice hole-in-the-wall. Here we are! Sure you don’t mind my sticking around awhile?”
“Glad to have you,” replied Kendall, observing with satisfaction that Harold was out. “That big chair’s the most comfortable.”
But Tooker chose a straight-backed chair, explaining gravely that he believed in mortifying the flesh whenever possible. He took up a book, glanced at the title and laid it down again:
“Mayne Reid. I never read him. Is he good?”
“That’s not mine; it’s Towne’s.”
“Towne? Harold Towne?”
Kendall nodded. Ned reached a hand across the table to him. Kendall, at a loss, took it, and Ned gave him a long, hard pressure.
“My poor boy,” he sobbed, “my poor, poor boy!”
Then he dropped Kendall’s hand, placed his own hands behind his head, leaned back in his chair and surveyed the room.
“Quite chaste,” he murmured. “I recognize some of the works of art. That chromo effect over there used to belong to Steve Woods when I was a boy here. And, yes, methinks yon cast-steel engraving was once in my own abode. I sold it to Gus Cooke for fifty cents. We were never friends afterwards. I suspect Gus changed quarters to get away from it.”