“Can’t you do something to help him out?” asked Roger. “You might get him an invitation, Ben, I should think.”
“Well, I can’t,” Ben answered impatiently. “I don’t run the things, and none of my people do, either.”
Later in the evening Dunn came into Ben Tracy’s room and sat down on the bed. “Say, Ben,” he began, “can’t you help me to get an invitation for that dancing class? I don’t care anything about the dancing part of it, but it’s going to be awfully disagreeable to hang round here all winter and be the only fellow left out. I shall be ashamed to live.”
Ben didn’t answer. He knew very well that if he took Dunn’s name to his Aunt Mary, she would want to know all about the applicant, his character, appearance, manners, habits, church relations,—all about his father, mother, relatives, acquaintances, ancestors, his father’s business and his grandfather’s. And after her nephew had undergone the cross-examination, she would probably refuse to help him and admonish him to avoid such associations.
“You might try Mr. Westcott,” said Ben, jumping at a stray idea, as Jason jumped at answers in the history class. “He could get your name on the list easily enough.”
“He wouldn’t do it if he could,” answered Dunn, despondently. “He’s down on me and would be glad of a chance to sting me and preach at me. If your Aunt Mary can get one for Louis, she can get one for me, too. Try her, won’t you? It’ll be the greatest favor you could do me. I’ll pay it back sometime, I swear I will. Say you will, please!”
Ben looked hard at the floor. He didn’t want to say yes, and he hadn’t the heart to say no; yet something he must say. He lifted his eyes for a moment to Dunn’s pleading face.
Dunn leaped forward and gripped his hand. “That’s the way to talk. You can fix it up all right. I’ll make it good to you some day before the year is out, ten times over!”
Dunn went back to his own room, leaving his anxieties behind him. They had settled on unlucky Ben, who brooded for a long time on the best way to approach his hypercritical aunt. When he crawled into bed at last, he was no nearer a satisfactory conclusion than when Dunn left him.
“If I ask her and she refuses, Jason will be worse off than he is now,” he muttered to himself as sleep crept over him. “I don’t know what to do!”