Stover drew back the bed, unlocked the door and waited with clenched fists for Butsey to spring at him. Butsey White, whose tempestuous rage had long since spent itself in hilarious laughter, as, indeed, had been the case with the rest, thought it best, however, for the purposes of authority, still to preserve a grave face. "You're a fine specimen!" he said curtly. "You've had a beautiful day of it." "Yes, I have," said Dink miserably, "a beautiful day!" Butsey, to whom the tragedy of the century was nothing but an incident, had not the slightest suspicion of Stover's absolute, overwhelming despair. Yet Butsey, too, had suffered, and profited by the suffering. "You better square up with Tough McCarty," he said, failing to read the anguish in Stover's eyes. "You certainly were the limit." "I hate him!" said Dink bitterly. "Why?" "He's a bully." "Tough McCarty? Not a bit of it." "He tried to bully me." "Why didn't you let them in?" said Butsey, putting the part in the middle of his hair with a dripping comb. "Let them in!" "Why, what do you think they'd have done to you?" Stover had never thought of that. After all, what could they have done to him? "I didn't think----" "Rats!" said Butsey. "They might have pied you on the bed; but that's nothing if you lie face down and keep your elbows in. That's all you'd have got. Then it would have been over; now you've got to square yourself. Well, brush up and come down to supper, and for the love of Mike smile a little." Butsey White's sentiments neither consoled nor convinced. Stover was too firmly persuaded of the enormity of his offense and the depth of his ignominy. In all his life he had never done a more difficult thing than to follow Butsey into the dining-room and face the disdainful glances of those from whom he had so lately fled. He sat in abject mental and physical suffering, his eyes on his plate, tasting nothing of what went into his mouth, chewing mechanically. Mr. Jenkins, to be affable, asked him how he had enjoyed the day. He mumbled some reply, he never knew what, hearing only the dreadful snicker that ran the table. He refused the dessert and left the table. It had been a nightmare.