Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/91

 "I was just creating the atmosphere—ahem! Well, he was a very naughty boy, I regret to say; sowed enough wild oats to last several centuries; that's why I'm so good. So when he got up to his ears in debt from gambling, he gambled some more. Dice, mostly, wasn't it, in those days?—dice with gin-slings and toddies and all those dopey drinks that give an awful head.

"Now, 'long about Senior year, when he'd been up at New York visiting his classmate, what did he do but get up against it. And she would have none of him. Then, like a fool—if I may say so—he tried a very old-fashioned and also a very modern method of forgetting about it. And so it was no wonder that when Commencement was approaching he saw a dip slipping right out of his hands because he hadn't money enough to pay his debts nor nerve enough to call on the old man for any more. He had to clear his debts or the Faculty wouldn't give him his degree. You may not be aware that there's an old rule to that effect still. Some of you can take that reminder for what it's