“Poor fellow!” I could not help saying.
“There you go!” said the pin; “be good enough to remember what I said, and if you can’t endure to hear of anybody sitting and looking at a wail, it’s no use my going on with my story.”
“I only meant that I could imagine how miserable he was that day,” said I; “but go on, please.”
“Two or three days after, Charlie Newcome called. Tom was alone, but he refused to see him. He cursed to himself when he heard the name. Charlie went back disappointed, but Tom made a great boast to his ‘friends’ that same night of his ‘cold shoulder to the prig,’ as he called it, and they highly applauded him for his sense.
“Again, a week later, Charlie called once more, but with the same result. He wrote letters, but Tom put them in the fire unread; he sent books, but they were all flung into a corner. In a thousand different ways he contrived to show Tom that, though ill-used and in suited, he was still his friend, and ready to serve him whenever opportunity should offer.
“All this while Tom was sinking lower and lower in self-respect. He was contracting a habit of drinking, and in a month or two after you had left he rarely came home sober.”
“And what about his bad friends?” asked I.
“There you are! why can’t you let me tell my story in peace? His bad friends visited him daily at first, made a lot of him, and praised him loudly for his resolution in dismissing Charlie, and for his ‘growing a man at last.’ They lent him money, they lost to him at cards and billiards, and they made his downward path as easy for him as possible.
“At last, about six months ago, Tom was found tipsy in the dissecting-room at the hospital, and cautioned by the Board. A fortnight later he was found in a similar state in one of the wards, and then he was summarily expelled from the place, and his name was struck off the roll of students.”
“Has it come to that?” I groaned.