"Platt is a nice boy, isn't he?" she continued with a shade more enthusiasm. "We went on the most wonderful party this Easter. He wasn't in training then, you know, and I have never seen any one funnier than he was. We were at the Greysons' in Ardmore, and Platt thought he was insulted by the butler when he took Platt's cigarette off a table and threw it in the fire. It was burning the table, but old Platt didn't know that, and he knocked the man down."
"It must have been funny," said Tom, who had heard the story before.
"Oh, it was a scream. I thought I'd die laughing. It was really awfully bad of him, though, don't you think?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Tom boldly. "I don't think it was so very bad. You've got to expect that sort of thing nowadays."
"Mercy, I didn't think you'd say that. Aren't you a professor here, or something?"
"Yes, something."
"Well, but I always thought——"
"What?" with a smile.
"Oh, nothing. Say, just between you and I, don't you think this is rather slow?" and she gave him a look that showed he was making good.
The hospitality they were accepting was, of course, his own Nancy's, and to be strictly honourable he should have defended everything, but with certain definite reservations in his mind he replied, "Deadly."