'Then I've got to tell you.' He swung his feet around; sat up; emptied his pipe, then filled it.
'Is it—is it—about me, Hump?'
'Yes. It is.'
'Well—then—hadn't you better tell me?'
'I'm trying to, Hen. It's dam' unpleasant. You remember—you told me once—early in the summer—' Humphrey, usually most direct, was having difficulty in getting it out—'you told me you rode a tandem up to Hoffmann's Garden with that little Wilcox girl.'
'Oh, that! That was nothing. Why all the time I lived at Mrs Wilcox's I never——'
'Yes, I know. Let me try to tell this, Hen. It's hard enough. She's in a scrape. That girl. There's a big row on. I'm not going into the details, so far as I've heard 'em. There ugly. They wouldn't help. But her mother's collapsed. Her uncle and aunt have turned up and taken the girl off somewhere. He's a butcher on the North Side.' Henry was pale but attentive.
'In all the time I lived there,' he began again...
'Please, Hen! Wait! It is one of those mean scandals that tear up a town like this every now and then. Boils up through the crust and has to be noticed. It's a beastly thing. The number of men involved... some older ones... and young Bancroft Widdicombe has left town. There's some queer talk about her marrying him. And they say one or two others have run away. Widdicombe got out before the storm broke. Jim Smith says he's been heard from at San Francisco.'
'But they can't say of me——'