He lifted Two Spot off his lap and deposited her on the desk, where she subsided contentedly against a pile of books and purred on as though nothing had happened. “Happy little bunch of fur, isn’t she?” asked Tommy. “If she’s too great an expense to you, I’ll take her off your hands.” “Indeed, you’ll not!” answered Allan. “While there’s a loaf left in the house, she shall have the crust.” “Scratch him, Kitty! Say, did Pete tell you he’d gone out for the freshman hockey team? Won’t he be a sight on the ice?” “He says he can skate,” answered Allan. “All I know is, I don’t want to have the thingamabob--puck--when he’s bearing down on me.” “Are you going to play?” “No; I’d like to, but I guess I won’t have time. Besides, I don’t skate very well.” “Skating isn’t everything in hockey,” said Tommy, wisely. “I can skate myself. I can make the ice look like a picture in a book or a map of China; but last year, when I went out for the freshman team, I was nearly slaughtered. Leroy butted me into the boards and somebody else cracked me over the shins with his stick and another chap tripped me up--accidentally, _of_ course--and I slid thirty-one feet or thereabouts on my head. The hair didn’t grow back for a month. I quit. Life was too precious.” “Wise youth!” commented Allan. “But we mustn’t miss seeing Pete play. Let’s go over to the rink to-morrow, if there is any ice.” “All right. And I guess there’ll be ice; it’s cold enough now to freeze a door-knob. Going down to Pete’s this evening? I’ll see you there, then. So long. Good-by, Two Spot, my angel child!” Tommy’s plan bore fruit. Allan had a visit from Walter Stearns next day, and two days later Allan was giving two hours out of each twenty-four to clerical work in the office of the Erskine College Athletic Association. The work, which consisted chiefly of answering letters from Professor Nast’s dictation--Professor Nast was chairman of the Athletic Committee--was ridiculously easy, if somewhat uninteresting, and seemed out of all proportion to the remuneration, which was one dollar an hour. There were five working days in the week for Allan, and as a result he was earning ten dollars a week--twice as much as he had hoped for. And all the time he was disturbed by a haunting thought that, when all was said and done, he was not really earning the money. But it seemed absurd to find fault with his good fortune so long as his employers were satisfied, and so he offered no objections. Afterwards he marveled at his blindness. About this time Pete wrote one of his semi-occasional letters to his father. He wasn’t much of a letter-writer, and the epistle as a whole would not interest us, but a portion of it merits attention.