"After the lot of us," added Tod, pushing his books about. "Look here, you two. I'm not obliged to go bothering to that Mitre in the evening, and I shan't. You'll be enough without me." "It won't do, Tod," I said. "He expects you." "What if he does? I have an engagement elsewhere." "Break it." "I shall not do anything of the kind. There! Hold your tongue, Johnny, and push the ink this way." Tod held to that. So when I and Whitney reached the Mitre after dinner, we said he was unable to get off a previous engagement, putting the excuse as politely as we could. "Oh," said old Brandon, twitching his yellow silk handkerchief off his head, for he had been asleep before the fire. "Engaged elsewhere, is he! With the lady I saw him driving out yesterday, I suppose: a person with blue feathers on her head." This struck us dumb. Bill said nothing, neither did I. "It was Miss Sophie Chalk, I presume," went on old Brandon, ringing the bell. "Sit down, boys; we'll have tea up." The tea and coffee must have been ordered beforehand, for they came in at once. Mr. Brandon drank four cups of tea, and ate a plate of bread-and-butter and some watercress. "Tea is my best meal in the day," he said. "You young fellows all like coffee best. Don't spare it. What's that by you, William Whitney?--anchovy toast? Cut that pound-cake, Johnny." Nobody could say, with all his strict notions, that Mr. Brandon was not hospitable. He'd have ordered up the Mitre's whole larder had he thought we could eat it. And never another word did he say about Tod until the things had gone away. Then he began, quietly at first: he sitting on one side the fire, I and Bill on the other. Touching gently on this, alluding to that, our eyes opened in more senses than one; for we found that he knew all about Sophie Chalk's sojourn in the town, the attention she received from the undergraduates, and Tod's infatuation. "What's Todhetley's object in going there?" he asked. "Amusement, I think, sir," hazarded Bill. "Does he gamble there for amusement too?" Where on earth had old Brandon got hold of all this? "How much has Todhetley lost already?" he continued. "He is in debt, I know. Not for the first time from the same cause." Bill stared. He knew nothing of that old episode in London with the Clement-Pells. I felt my face flush. "Tod does not care for playing really, sir. But the cards are there, and he sees others play and gets drawn in to join." "Well, what amount has he lost this time, Johnny?" "I don't know, sir." "But you know that he is in debt?" "I--yes, sir. Perhaps he is a little."