“There’ll be no difficulty about that, my dear fellow,” said Howard. “I can easily get Betty to arrange it. We meet every Sunday, and we have to walk right out beyond Cold Harbor. She says she feels a bit lonely going out all that way by herself. Now suppose she went out with your girl and you went out with me--that’d be pretty simple, wouldn’t it?”
“Oh, that would be splendid. Do you think you could fix it up?”
“But I shall feel an awful fool,” Roland insisted. “I shan’t know what to say or anything.”
“Don’t you worry about that, my dear fellow; you just look as if you did and keep your eyes open, and you’ll soon learn; these girls know a lot more than you would think.”
So it was arranged. Roland found by the time his foot was right again that he had let himself in for a pretty exacting program. It had all seemed jolly enough up at the sanatorium, but when he was back in the house, and life reëstablished its old values, he began to regret it very heartily. He didn’t mind going out with the girl--that would be quite exciting: besides it was an experience to which everyone had to come some time or other--but he did not look forward to a long walk with Howard every Sunday afternoon for the rest of the term.
“Whately, old son,” he said to his reflection in the glass as he shaved himself on the next Sunday morning, “you’ve made a pretty sanguinary fool of yourself, but you can’t clear out now. You’ve got to see it through.”
It was very awkward though when Anderson ran up to him in the cloisters with “Hullo, Whately, going out for a stroll? Well, just wait half-a-sec, while I fetch my hat.” Roland had an infernal job getting rid of him.
“But, my dear man,” Anderson had protested, “where on earth are you going? I’ve always thought you the most pious man in the house. But if it’s a smoke I’ll watch you, and if it’s a drink I’ll help you.”
“Oh, no, it’s not that. I’m going out with a man in Morgan’s.”
Anderson’s mouth emitted a long whistle of surprise.
“So our Whately has deserted his old friends? Ah, well, when one gets into the XV., I know.”
Roland could see that Anderson was offended.
But it was even worse when he came back to find his study full of seven indignant sportsmen wanting to know why on earth he had taken to going out for walks with “a dirty tick in Morgan’s, who was no use at anything and didn’t even wash.”