“He isn’t--he isn’t?”--Haydock stuffed his fingers in his ears and shrieked. “He is, he is!” bellowed Sears. Then they both yelled, and made such a noise that the fellows downstairs came running up to see what was going on. But they didn’t tell them. They couldn’t, in the first place, and the fellows wouldn’t have understood if they had. The McGaw-Crœsus episode was one of those little interpolated experiences two people own together so completely that they can’t share it if they want to. This one happened to be the kind over which the partners could laugh. When it happens the other way,--when two people get together and cry,--it isn’t nearly as valuable a factor in the divine accident of friendship; there is always one of them who very selfishly does most of the crying. For a time there was only mirth over McGaw. It was natural enough that Wolcott should have but a one-sided appreciation of the affair; _he_ had made a discovery, _he_ had been surprised, _he_ had found it very startling and absurd. It was not to be expected that he would stop laughing to consider McGaw’s feelings in the matter. And Haydock, who was usually thoughtful and considerate, treated the revelation as he did at first, because it had come to him through Wolcott’s eyes. Only when his interest in detail prompted him to ask questions, did he begin to reconstruct the scene in Wolcott’s room, and feel intensely sorry for McGaw. “What did you say when you turned around and first saw the clothes?” he asked Wolcott. “Say? I didn’t say anything, I just looked, and wondered if the exams had gone to my brain.” “Didn’t he do anything?” “Why, of course not; what did you suppose he’d do? Tell me that he’d changed his shirt? I could see that for myself; heaven knows I almost dropped dead!” “Well, you certainly didn’t just sit there staring at the man, did you?” “Sit there? If I’d sat there another second, I’d have yelled in his face. I crashed out of the room and exploded in the hall. I came over here to find you.” “Do you mean to say he’s in your room yet, waiting?” “I’m sure I don’t know,--I wouldn’t go back to look for gold and precious stones.” “What do you suppose he thought?” “Lord, I don’t know,--I don’t care what he thought! What do you suppose I thought?” Wolcott laughed. “But if you ran out of your room that way, and laughed in the hall, as you say you did, he must have known you were laughing at him,” said Haydock, gravely. “Why certainly he did! I don’t suppose the creature thought I was throwing a fit like that just for exercise. What difference does it make anyhow?” Sears went on indifferently. “I’ll never see him again. To-day’s the last time he was coming to tutor me,--‘the exam’ is to-morrow; I’ll send him a cheque for what I owe him, and there you are.” “But he must have thought you were laughing at him because he was dressed up,” persisted Haydock.