“H-m!” The doctor’s eyes studied the boy’s face again but with less complacency this time.  Like Patrick Berry he thought a young Holiday would better stick to the campus, not run loose on Cherry Street.

“Know the girl well?” he queried.

Ted hesitated, flushed, looked unmistakably embarrassed.

“Yes, rather,” he admitted.  “I ran round with her quite a little the first of the summer.  I got her the job at Berry’s.  Her grandfather, a pious old stick in the mud, turned her out of his house.  She had to do something to earn her living.  I hope she isn’t going to be sick.  It would be an awful mess.  She can’t have much saved up.  Go and see her, will you, Doc?  Forty-nine Cherry.  Taylor is the name.”

“H-m.”  The doctor made a note of these facts.  “All right, I’ll go.  But you had better keep away from Cherry Street, young man.  It is not the environment you belong in.”

“Environment be—­blessed!” said Ted.  “Don’t you begin on that sort of rot, please, Doc.  Old Pat Berry’s just been giving me a lecture on the same subject.  You make me tired both of you.  As if the girls on Cherry Street weren’t as good any day as the ones on the campus, just because they work in shops and stores and the girls on the campus work—­us,” he concluded with a grin.  “I’m not an infant that has to be kept in a Kiddie coop you know.”

“Look out you don’t land in a chicken coop,” sniffed the doctor.  “Very well, you young sinner.  Don’t listen to me if you don’t want to.  I know I might as well talk to the wind.  You always were open to all the fool germs going, Ted Holiday.  Some day you’ll own the old Doc knew best.”

“I wouldn’t admit to being so hanged well up on the chicken-roost proposition myself if I were you,” retorted Ted impudently.  “So long.  I’m much obliged for your kind favors all but the moral sentiments.  You can have those back.  You may need ’em to use over again.”

So Ted went on his way, dropped in to see Elsie, had a cup of tea and innumerable small cakes, enjoyed a foxtrot to phonograph music with the rug rolled up out of the way, conversed amicably with the Ancient History Prof himself, who wasn’t such a bad sort as Profs go and had the merit of being one of the few instructors who had not flunked Ted Holiday in his course the previous year.

The next morning Ted found a letter from Doctor Hendricks in his mail which he opened with some curiosity wondering what the old Doc could have to say.  He read the communication through in silence and tucking it in his pocket walked out of the room as if he were in a dream, paying no attention to the question somebody called after him as he went.  He went on to his classes but he hardly knew what was going on about him.  His mind seemed to have stopped dead like a stop watch with the reading of the old doctor’s letter.