The dean summoned Elmer to his gloomy house on the edge of the campus—it was a house which smelled of cabbage and wet ashes—and demanded:
“Gantry, just what is this business about you and some girl at Schoenheim?”
“Why, Dean,” in hurt rectitude, “I’m engaged to a fine young lady there—daughter of one of my deacons.”
“Well, that’s good. It’s better to marry than to burn—or at least so it is stated in the Scriptures. Now I don’t want any monkey-business about this. A preacher must walk circumspectly. You must shun the very appearance of evil. I hope you’ll love and cherish her, and seems to me it would be well not only to be engaged to her but even to marry her. Thaddeldo.”
“Now what the devil did he mean by that?” protested Parsifal as he went home.
VII
He had to work quickly. He had less than two months before the threatened marriage.
If he could entangle Lulu with some one? What about Floyd Naylor? The fool loved her.
He spent as much time in Schoenheim as possible, not only with Lulu but with Floyd. He played all his warm incandescence on Floyd, and turned that trusting drudge from enemy into admiring friend. One day when Floyd and he were walking together to the hand-car Elmer purred:
“Say, Floydy, some ways it’s kind of a shame Lu’s going to marry me and not you. You’re so steady and hard-working and patient. I fly off the handle too easy.”