Here's a health to King Charles, _Fill him up_ to the brim!
the assemblage broke up, in spite of savage disapproval from the windows.
Then only did we surrender to our miserable apprehension of the imminent, deadly "exam." in Fine Arts 4, and with the earnestly avowed purpose of really mastering the difference between a gargoyle and a lintel before we retired to rest, reluctantly mounted the stone steps recently vacated by our musical brethren. Our room was Number 10, the first as you go in on the right, and the flickering gaslight in the hall showed that the door, in accordance with inviolable custom, was still ajar.
"Wait a second while I light the lamp," I remarked to Ralph, and, feeling my way across the room to my desk, stood there fumbling for the matches. As I did so I was startled to hear a voice from the darkness in the direction of the fireplace.
"I beg your pardon," it said. "I'm afraid I have usurped your room, but the door was open and its invitation was too attractive to be refused."
The match flared up and I saw before me Ralph's "Old Marse."
"Oh--of course--certainly," I replied. He had arisen from the armchair in which evidently he had been listening to the singing. Then the wick caught, and by the increased light I saw that the man before me looked older than he had in the morning. His hair was almost white, and his face about the eyes finely wrinkled, but its expression was full of kindly humor, and I felt somehow that this stranger quite belonged there, and that it was I who was the intruder.
"You see," he continued with a smile, "I feel that I have a certain right to be here. This used to be my room. Let me introduce myself. Curtis is my name--Curtis, '64."
"Glad to meet you, Mr. Curtis," said I. "I'm Jarvis, 190--. Was this really your room? That seems an awfully long time ago."
"I'm afraid it seems longer ago to you than to me. Would you mind if I should smoke a cigar with you? I'd like to ask you some things about the old building."
"Please do," said I. "And let me introduce my roommate, Ralph Hughes."
Ralph shook hands with Mr. Curtis, and we all sat down around the fireplace. It seemed rather inhospitable not to be able to offer him any refreshments, but there was only one bottle of beer in the _papier-maché_ fire pail in my bedroom, and it was warm at that. Hence we accepted our guest's cigars with some diffidence and awaited his first interrogation. I could see that Ralph was brimming over with eagerness to ask about "Uncle Ned" and a hundred other things which that romantic ostrich of a boy had invented during the afternoon, and I felt quite sure that before Mr. Curtis got away he would be obliged to pay heavily for the temerity of his visit by being offered up upon the altar as a sacrifice to Ralph's bump of acquisitiveness.