"
" But you must go. Think how it would look!
All the students down there dining without us, and
cutting up capers! You must come."
" Yes," he said, dubiously, " but who will look after
Marjory ? "
" She wants to be left alone," announced Mrs.
Wainwright, as if she was the particular herald of this
news. " She wants to be left alone."
" Well, I suppose we may as well go down."
Before they went, the professor tiptoed into his
daughter's room. In the darkness he could only see
her waxen face on the pillow, and her two eyes gazing
fixedly at the ceiling. He did not speak, but immedi.
ately withdrew, closing the door noiselessly behind
him.
I
CHAPTER XXVI.
IF the professor and Mrs. Wainwright had descended
sooner to a lower floor of the hotel, they
would have found reigning there a form of anarchy.
The students were in a smoking room which was also
an entrance hall to the dining room, and because there
was in the middle of this apartment a fountain containing
gold fish, they had been moved to license and
sin. They had all been tubbed and polished and
brushed and dressed until they were exuberantly beyond
themselves. The proprietor of the hotel brought
in his dignity and showed it to them, but they minded
it no more than if he had been only a common man.
He drew himself to his height and looked gravely
at them and they jovially said: " Hello, Whiskers."
American college students are notorious in their country
for their inclination to scoff at robed and crowned
authority, and, far from being awed by the dignity of
the hotel-keeper, they were delighted with it.
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