Part 105

"I've got to go over and meet a lot of women," said Dink in disgust. "Confound Tough McCarty! That's a rotten trick to play on me. I'll wring his neck!"

"Go on now, make yourself beautiful!" said the Tennessee Shad, delighted. "Remember the whole school will be watching you."

"Shut up!" said Dink savagely, making the grand toilet, which consisted in putting on a high collar, exchanging his belt for a pair of suspenders and donning a pair of patent-leathers. "The place for women is at home! It's an outrage!"

He tied his necktie with a vicious lunge, ran the comb once through the tangled hair, glanced at his hands, decided that they would pass muster, slapped on his hat and went out, kicking the door open.

At the Woodhull, Tough hailed him from his window. Dink went up, bored and rebellious. The door opened, he found himself in Tough McCarty's room in the vortex of a crowd of fellow-sufferers. Over by the window-seat two fluffy figures, with skirts and hats on, were seated. He shook hands with both; one was Mrs. McCarty, the other was the daughter, he wasn't quite sure which. He said something about the delight which the meeting afforded him, and, gravitating into a corner, fell upon Butsey White, with whom he gravely shook hands.

"Isn't this awful?" said Butsey in a confidential whisper.

"Frightful!"

"What the deuce's got into Tough?"

"It's a rotten trick!"

"Let's hook it."

"All right. Slide toward the door."

But at this moment, when deliverance seemed near, Tough bore down and, taking Stover by the arm, drew him aside.

"I say, stick by me on this, old man," he said desperately. "Take 'em to the game with me, will you?"

"To the game!" cried Dink in horror. "Oh, Tough, come now, I say, I'm no fusser. I'm tongue-tied and pigeon-toed. Oh, I say, old man, do get some one else!"

But as Tough McCarty kept a firm grip on the lapel of his coat Dink suddenly found himself, with the departure of the other guests, a helpless captive. The first painful scraps of conversation passed in a blur. Before he knew it he was crossing the campus, actually walking, in full view of the school, at the side of Miss McCarty.

Her unconsciousness was paralyzing, perfectly paralyzing! Dink, struggling for a word in the vast desert of his brain, was overwhelmed with the ease with which his companion ran on. He stole a glance under the floating azure veil and decided, from the way the brilliant blue parasol swung from her hand, that she must be a woman of the world--thirty, at least.

He extracted his hands precipitately from the trousers pockets in which they had been plunged and buttoned the last button of his coat. Somehow, his hands seemed to wander all over his anatomy, like jibs that had broken loose. He tried to clasp them behind his back, like the Doctor, or to insert one between the first and second button of his coat, the characteristic pose of the great Corsican, according to his history. For a moment he found relief by slipping them, English fashion, into his coat pockets; but at the thought of being detected thus by the Tennessee Shad he withdrew them as though he had struck a hornet's nest.

The school, meanwhile, had gamboled past, all snickering, of course, at his predicament. In this state of utter misery he arrived at last at the field, where, to his amazement, quite a group of Fifth-Formers came up and surrounded Miss McCarty, chattering in the most bewildering manner. Dink seized the opportunity to drop back, draw a long sigh, reach madly behind for his necktie, which had climbed perilously near the edge of his collar, and shoot back his cuffs. He saw the Tennessee Shad and Dennis de Boru grinning at him from the crowd, and showed them his fist with a threatening gesture.

Then the game began and he was seated by Miss McCarty, unutterably relieved that the tension of the contest had diverted the entire attention of the school from his particular sufferings.

The excitement of the play for the first time gave him an opportunity to study his companion. His first estimate was undoubtedly correct; she was plainly a woman of the world. No one else could sit at such perfect ease, the cynosure of so many eyes. Her dress was some wonderful creation, from Paris, no doubt, that rustled with an alluring sound and gave forth a pleasant perfume.

The more he looked the more his eye approved. She was quite unusual--quite. She had style--a very impressive style. He had never before remembered any one who held herself quite so well, or whose head carried itself so regally. There was something Spanish, too, about her black hair and eyes and the flush of red in her cheeks.

Having perceived all this Dink began to recover from his panic and, with a desire to wipe out his past awkwardness, began busily to search for some subject with which gracefully to open up the conversation.

At that moment his eye fell upon his boot carelessly displayed and, to his horror, beheld there a gaping crack. This discovery drove all desire for conversation at once out of his head. By a covert movement he drew the offending shoe up under the shadow of the other.

"You hate this, don't you?" said a laughing voice.

He turned, blushing, to find Miss McCarty's dark eyes alive with amusement.

"Oh, now, I say, really----" he began.

"Of course, you loathe being dragged out this way," she said, cutting in. "Confess!"

Dink began to laugh guiltily.