There was a rap on the door and the knob turned as he shot the photograph into his pocket and pretended to be reading a volume of Bacchylides—upside down. The intruder was Teed. Litton was too much startled and too throbbing with guilt to express his indignation. He stammered:
"We-well, Teed?" He almost called him teed-leums, his tongue had so caught the rhythm of love.
Teed came forward with an ominous self-confidence bordering on insolence. There was a glow in his eye that made his former tyrant quail.
"Professor, I'd like a word with you about those conditions. I wish you'd let me off on 'em."
"Let you off, T-Teed?"
"Yes, sir. I can't get ready for the exams. I've boned until my skull's cracked and it lets the blamed stuff run out faster than I can cram it in. The minute I leave college I expect to forget everything I've learned here, anyway; so I'd be ever so much obliged if you'd just pass me along."
"I don't think I quite comprehend," said Litton, who was beginning to regain his pedagogical dignity.
"All you've gotta do," said Teed, "is to put a high enough mark on my papers. You gimme a special examination and I'll make the best stab I can at answering the questions; then you just shut one eye and mark it just over the failure line. That'll save you a lot o' time and fix me hunky-dory."
Litton was glaring at him, hearing the uncouth "gimme" and "gotta," and wondering that a man could spend four years in college and scrape off so little paint. Then he began to realize the meaning of Teed's proposal. His own honor was in traffic. He groaned in suffocation:
"Do you dare to ask me to put false marks on examination-papers, sir?"