“Damn!”
“Pooh!” said McCarthy, chuckling with delight.
“Petticoats!”
“Alas!”
“A lot of silly, yapping, gushing, fluffy, giggling, tee-heeing, tittering, languishing, vapid, useless—”
“My boy, immense! Go on!”
“Confound Bob Story, why the deuce did he rope me into this? I loathe females.”
“And one just dotes on you,” said McCarthy, with the expression of a Cheshire cat.
“I won’t go,” said Stover loudly.
“Are you going in that green symphony?”
“Why not?”
In the midst of this quarrel, Joe Hungerford entered, with a solemn face.
“You’re going to this massacre at Story’s?”
“Don’t I look like it?” said Dink crossly.
“We’ll go over together then,” said Hungerford, with a sigh of relief.
“I say, help yourself to a cigar, Joe,” said McCarthy, with the air of a Maecenas.
“Cuba Libre?” said Hungerford, approaching the box.
“And à bas Spain!”
Hungerford examined the cigars with a certain amount of caution which was not lost on the roommates.
“How many of these have you smoked?” he asked, turning to them with interest.
“Oh, about three apiece.”
“How do you like ’em?”
“Wonderful!” said Dink loudly.
“Wonderful!” said McCarthy.
The three lit up simultaneously.
“What did you pay for yours?” said Hungerford, with a sort of inward concentration on the flavor.
“Ten bright silver ones.”
“I paid twenty-five for two. How do they taste?”
“Wonderful!”
“Troutman only paid seven-fifty for his box.”
“What!”
“And Hunter only five.”
“Five dollars?” said McCarthy, with a foreboding.
“But what I can’t understand is this—”
“What?”
“Dopey McNab got a box at two-fifty.”
A sudden silence fell on the room, while, reflectively, each puffed forth quick, questioning volumes of smoke.
“How do they smoke?” said Hungerford again.
“Wonderful!” said McCarthy, hoping against hope.
“They’re not!” said Dink firmly.
He rose, went to the window, and cast forth the malodorous thing. Hungerford followed suit. McCarthy, proud as the Old Guard, sat smoking on; only one leg was drawn up under the other in a tense, convulsive way.
“They were wonderful last night,” he said obstinately.
“They certainly were.”
“And they were wonderful this morning.”
“Not quite so wonderful.”
“I like ’em still.”
“And Dopey McNab bought a hundred at two-fifty.”
This was too much for McCarthy. He surrendered.
Dopey McNab, at this favorable conjunction, sidled into the room with his box under his arm and the face of a boy soprano on duty.
“I say, fellows, I’ve got a little proposition to make.”
A sort of dull, rolling murmur went around the room which he did not notice.
“I find I’ve been cracking my bank account—the fact is, I’m strapped as a mule and have got to raise enough to pay my wash bill.”
“Wash bill, Dopey?” said McCarthy softly.
“We must wash,” said Dopey firmly. “To resume. As I detest, abhor, and likewise shrink from borrowing from friends—”
“Repeat that,” said Joe Hungerford.
“I will not. But for all of which reasons, I have a little bargain to propose. Here is a box of the finest cigars ever struck the place.”
“A full box?”
“Only three cigars out.”
“Three!” said Hungerford with a significant look at Stover.
“I could sell them on the campus for twenty, easy.”
“But you love your friends,” said Stover, moving a little, so as to shut off the retreat.
“Who will give me seven-fifty for it?” said McNab, with the air of one filling a beggar with ecstasy.
“Seven-fifty. You’ll let it go at seven-fifty, Dopey?” said McCarthy faintly, paralyzed at such duplicity.
“I will.”
“Dopey,” said Dink, with a signal to the others, “what is the exact figure of that wash bill of yours?”
“Two dollars and sixty-two cents.”
“Will you take two dollars and sixty-two cents for it?”
“You’re fooling.”
“I am very, very serious.”
McNab struck a pose, while over his face was seen the conflict of duty and avarice.
“Take it,” he said at last, in a glow of virtue.
“I didn’t say I wanted it.”
“You didn’t!”
“I only wanted to know what you’d really take.”
“What’s this mean?” said McNab indignantly.
“Dopey, would you sacrifice it at just a little less?” said Hungerford.
But here McNab, suddenly smelling danger in the air, made a spring backwards. Hungerford, who was on guard, caught him.
“Put him in the chair and tie him,” said Stover, savagely.
Which was done.
“I say, look here, what are you going to do with me?” said McNab, fiercely.
“You’re going to sit there and smoke a couple of those museum cigars, for our delectation and amusement.”
“Assassins!”
“Two cigars.”
“Never! I’ll starve to death first!”
“All right. Keep on sitting there.”
“But this is a crime! Police!”
“There are other crimes, Dopey.”
“Hold up,” said McNab, frantically, as he perceived the cigar being prepared. “I’ve got to dine over at the Story’s at one o’clock.”
“So have we,” said Hungerford, “but McCarthy will watch you for us.”
“I will,” said McCarthy, licking his chops.
“I’ve got to be there,” said McNab, wriggling in a frenzy.
“Smoke right up, then. You can smoke them in twenty minutes.”
“Police!”
“I say, Dink,” said Hungerford, as McNab’s head whipped from side to side like a recalcitrant child’s. “Perhaps we’d better get in all the crowd who fell for the cigars—round ’em up.”
“I’ll smoke it,” said McNab instantly.
“I thought you would.”
They sat around, unfeelingly, grinning, while McNab, strapped in like a papoose, rebelliously, with much sputtering and coughing, smoked the cigar that Dink fed him like a trained nurse.
“Fellows, I’ve got to get to that dinner.”
“We know that, Dopey—but there’s one thing you won’t do there—tell the story of the Cuba libre cigar.”
“Say, let me off and I’ll put you on to a great stunt.”
“We can’t be bought.”
“I’ll tell you, I’ll trust you! We’re going to have a cop-killing over in Freshman row. We’ve got a whole depot of Roman candles. Let me off this second cigar and I’ll work you in.”
“We’ll be there!”
“You bandits, I’ll get even with you.”
“You probably will, Dopey, but you’ll never rob us of this memory.”
“Curse you, feed it to me quickly.”
The cigar consumed to the last rebellious puff, McNab was released in a terrific humor, and departed hastily to dress, after remarking in a deadly manner:
“I’ll get you yet—you brutal kidnappers.”
“I think it’s a rather low trick of Bob Story’s,” said Stover, considering
