"Yes, sir. I can't get ready for the exams. I've boned until my skull's cracked and it lets the blamed stuff run out faster than I can cram it in. The minute I leave college I expect to forget everything I've learned here, anyway; so I'd be ever so much obliged if you'd just pass me along." "I don't think I quite comprehend," said Litton, who was beginning to regain his pedagogical dignity. "All you've gotta do," said Teed, "is to put a high enough mark on my papers. You gimme a special examination and I'll make the best stab I can at answering the questions; then you just shut one eye and mark it just over the failure line. That'll save you a lot o' time and fix me hunky-dory." Litton was glaring at him, hearing the uncouth "gimme" and "gotta," and wondering that a man could spend four years in college and scrape off so little paint. Then he began to realize the meaning of Teed's proposal. His own honor was in traffic. He groaned in suffocation: "Do you dare to ask me to put false marks on examination-papers, sir?" "Aw, Professor, what's the dif? You couldn't grind Latin and Greek into me with a steel-rolling machine. Gimme a chance! There's a little girl waiting for me outside and a big job. I can't get one without the other--and I don't get either unless you folks slip me the sheepskin." "Impossible, sir! Astounding! Insulting! Impossible!" "Have a heart, can't you?" "Leave the room, sir, at once!" "All right!" Teed sighed, and turned away. At the door he paused to murmur, "All right for you, Stookie-tookie!" Litton's spectacles almost exploded from his nose. "What's that?" he shrieked. Teed turned and came back, with an intolerable smirk, straight to the desk. He leaned on it with odious familiarity and grinned. "Say, Prof, did you ever hear of the dictagraph?" "No! And I don't care to now." "You ought to read some of the modern languages, Prof! Dictagraph comes from two perfectly good Latin words: dictum and graft--well, you'll know 'em. But the Greeks weren't wise to this little device. I got part of it here." He took from his pocket the earpiece of the familiar engine of latter-day detective romance. He explained it to the horribly fascinated Litton, whose hair stood on end and whose voice stuck in his throat in the best Vergilian manner. Before he quite understood its black magic Litton suspected the infernal purpose it had been put to. His wrath had melted to a sickening fear when Teed reached the conclusion of his uninterrupted discourse: "The other night I was calling on a pair of girls at the dormitory where your--where Professor Binley lives. They pointed out the sofa near the fireplace where you and the professoress sit and hold hands and make googoo eyes."