Purdick took time to think about it. Trying to be perfectly honest with himself, he had to admit that he had never looked at it in just that way before. But poverty pride――especially when it is backed up by a lot of prejudice――is a pretty stubborn thing. “If you won’t tell me anything, how am I going to know that this isn’t rotten money I’m spending?” he demanded. “What do you mean by ‘rotten money’?” “Money that’s been sweated out of a lot of poor people who couldn’t help themselves.” Larry shook his head. “I can’t go back that far, Purdy――and I don’t think you ought to. The money’s doing a good job now, whatever it did before it came to you.” “But I think you might at least tell me who gave it. Supposing it happens to be somebody that I’d rather die than take it from? There’s a bunch of just such fellows here in Sheddon.” “Don’t you lose any sleep about that. When the thing was put up to me, I asked myself just one question, and that was if I’d take it if that same fellow offered it to me and I needed it. That question sort of answered itself. I’ve got a lot of that same poverty pride myself, Purdy, but I’d have done it in a minute, if only for one reason; I could see that it was going to be the best thing that ever happened to that fellow to give it.” “And you won’t tell me his name?” “I can’t; that was the one thing he made me promise.” “Am I never going to know it?” “That’s up to him. And he’s right about that, too. What you don’t know needn’t worry you, and you don’t have to feel under any obligations. Now, let’s get to work on this descrip. It’s pretty stiff for to-morrow.” It was perhaps a week beyond this talk, one evening when Larry was putting on his coat to go over to the _Micrometer_ office with his athletic notes, that Purdick looked up from his book to say: “Seeing much of Dickie Maxwell these days, Donnie?” Larry shook his head. As a matter of fact, he had been seeing far too little of Dick since the Zeta Omegas had taken him in. For the first week or two Dick had dropped in at the Man-o’-War every evening or so. But the “drop-ins” had grown farther and farther apart as time went on, until now they had stopped altogether. “No, I don’t see him very often, except on the campus,” Larry admitted. “What makes you ask?” “It’s none of my business,” Purdick went on rather hesitantly, “but he’s running with a pretty rapid bunch. Did you ever hear of the ‘Mixers’?” “No; what is it?” “It’s a private club, and it meets over in town. That ought to tell you all you need to know about it.” “It doesn’t.” Apart from athletics and his job on the _Micrometer_, Larry knew little of what went on outside of his classroom work. Little Purdick was staring at the darkened window; a habit he had when he had to say something that he didn’t want to say. And what he said didn’t explain much――except by inference. “We can give the frats credit for one thing, anyway,” he remarked. “They don’t allow card-playing for money in the houses.”