“This where you do your tailoring, Tucker?” he asked.
“Y-yes, sir,” Toby stammered. He had tried so hard to hide every trace of that occupation, too! The gas-stove, its six feet of tubing wound around it, reposed under the bed and the irons and other things were in the bottom of the wardrobe. He wondered how Mr. Loring knew about it, not surmising that the coach had naturally enough sought to learn all he could of Toby before his visit. “I don’t do any tailoring,” corrected Toby. “I just clean clothes and press them.”
“Get much to do?”
“Lots sometimes, sir. In winter I don’t get so much. Fellows don’t seem to mess their things up in winter. They wear sweaters and old trousers a good deal.”
“So you try to liven trade by offering special inducements? I see. Well, that shows you have a business head, Tucker.”
Evidently Mr. Loring had seen The Scholiast. Toby hadn’t thought of that likelihood. Of course, he wasn’t ashamed of cleaning clothes, but Mr. Loring was such a correct, immaculately-attired gentleman—what Toby a year ago would have called a “dude”—that he might lose interest in a fellow who had to perform such labor to eke out his expenses. Toby viewed Mr. Loring doubtfully and was silent.
“When I was here there was a fellow named Middlebury who used to make rather a good thing of darning socks. He was a wonder at it. I’ve never seen a woman do it better, by Jove! Charged two cents a pair, I think it was, and was as busy as a hen. Nice chap, Middlebury was. Honor Man two years and rowed on the crew. There isn’t much a fellow can do here, though, to earn money, and you were clever to think of the cleaning and pressing business. At college it’s rather different. All sorts of things there for a chap; waiting on table, looking after furnaces and shoveling snow and cutting grass, taking subscriptions, selling things—no end to them.” Coach Loring looked around the little room, but not at all critically. “I don’t believe I was ever in this room, all the time I was at school here.”
“Where did you room, sir?” asked Toby.
“Clarke first, and then Dudley. I remember young Thompson roomed on the floor below. Number 20, I think it was. I wonder what became of Arthur. Funny how you lose track of fellows after you get away. They don’t provide you with many luxuries up here, Tucker.”