The problem of expenses was still troublesome, but it became evident that there, too, Bailly would be a useful guide.
"I have actually bearded the dean about you," he said one evening. "There are a few scholarships not yet disposed of. If I can prove to him that you live by syntax alone you may get one. As for the rest, there's the commons. Impecunious students profitably wait on table there."
He didn't like Bailly's long, slightly pained scrutiny. There was no use keeping things from him anyway.
"I can trust you, Mr. Bailly," he said, quickly, and in a very low voice, as if the walls might hear: "I know you won't give me away. I--I was too much like a servant until the day I came to Princeton. I've sworn I'd never be again. I can't touch that job. I tell you I'd rather starve."
"To do so," Bailly remarked, drily, "would be a senseless suicide. You'll appreciate some day, young man, that the world lives by service."
George wondered why he glanced at the untidy table with a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth.
"I'm also sorry to learn your ambition is not altogether unselfish, or altogether worthy."
"It was forced on me," he said. "I worked in my father's livery business until he failed. Then I had to go to a rich man's stable. I was treated like dirt. Nobody would have anything to do with me. They won't here, probably, if they find out."
"Never mind," Bailly sighed. "We will seek other means. Let us get on with our primers."
Once or twice, when some knotty problem took George to the house during the early morning, he found the spic-and-span neatness he had observed at his first visit. In Bailly's service clearly someone laboured with a love of labour, without shame or discouragement.
One evening in August the maid who customarily opened the door was replaced by a short, plump-looking woman well over thirty. She greeted George with kindly eyes.
"I daresay you're Mr. Morton. I've heard a great deal about you."
George had never seen a face more unaffected, more friendly, more competent. His voice was respectful.
"And I am Mrs. Bailly. We expect much of you."
There rushed over George a feeling that, his own ambition aside, he had to give them a great deal. No wonder Squibs felt as he did if his ideas of service had emerged from such a source.