Dr. Temple stared after him, but the gambler stared at Dr. Temple with a mingling of accusation and of homage. "So you're one of us," he said, and seizing the old man's limp hand, shook it heartily: "I got to slip it to you. Your make-up is great. You nearly had me for a come-on. Great!"
And then he sauntered out, leaving the clergyman's head swimming. Dr. Temple turned to Mallory for explanations, but Mallory only waved him away. He was not quite convinced himself. He was convinced only that whatever else anybody might be, nobody apparently desired to be a clergyman in these degenerate days.
The conductor returned and threw into Dr. Temple the glare of two basilisk eyes. The old man put out a beseeching hand and began:
"My good man, you do me a grave injustice."
The conductor snapped back: "You say a word to me and I'll do you worse than that. And if I spot you with a pack of cards in your hand again, I'll tie you to the cow-ketcher."
Then he marched off again. The doctor fell back into a chair, trying to figure it out. Then Ashton and Fosdick and little Jimmie Wellington and Wedgewood strolled in and, dropping into chairs, ordered drinks. Before the doctor could ask anybody to explain, Ashton was launched on a story. His mind was a suitcase full of anecdotes, mostly of the smoking-room order.
Wherever three or four men are gathered together, they rapidly organize a clearing-house of off-color stories. The doctor listened in spite of himself, and in spite of himself he was amused, for stories that would be stupid if they were decent, take on a certain verve and thrill from their very forbiddenness.
The dear old clergyman felt that it would be priggish to take flight, but he could not make the corners of his mouth behave. Strange twitchings of the lips and little steamy escapes of giggle-jets disturbed him. And when Ashton, who was a practiced raconteur, finished a drolatic adventure with the epilogue, "And the next morning they were at Niagara Falls," the old doctor was helpless with laughter. Some superior force, a devil no doubt, fairly shook him with glee.
"Oh, that's bully," he shrieked, "I haven't heard a story like that for ages."
"Why, where have you been, Dr. Temple?" asked Ashton, who could not imagine where a man could have concealed himself from such stories. But he laughed loudest of all when the doctor answered: "You see, I live in Ypsilanti. They don't tell me stories like that."