"Bridge!" he exploded. "Why, Francis doesn't know bridge from casino! _Poker_, I tell you, and faro--and all the rest. The plucking was done nightly at a certain--er--club, the establishment of a gentleman by the name of McGinty--'Spot' McGinty--oh, you _know_ the place, then?"
For I had gasped audibly. "Only--only by reputation," I responded hastily.
"Um, dare say it has got 'reputation,' all right. I guess, too, there are more crooked things than streets within a couple of miles of Harvard Square, eh? Why, do you know, Francis and a couple of classmates were caught in a raid there one night and lugged off to the station in a patrol--I had to bail 'em out by wire. That's how _I_ know about the place." And, discriminatingly, he selected a fresh cigar and lighted it.
"You--you don't mean they were really arrested?" I faltered.
He nodded grimly through a funnel of smoke. "How could they help being? Why, dammit, they were too drunk to get away!" He settled in his seat with a scowl. "I can tell you it was all I could do to stave off expulsion!"
My jolly head spun. By Jove, Radcliffe girls must have moved on some since my day! Then they were coldly intellectual--went in strong for the earnest life, you know--the serious purpose existence--all that sort of thing. All of us looked on them with more or less awe--that is, except Smithers; he tried some intimate flirtations, one morning with a bunch in the Botanic Gardens and got stung. _He_ said they were "prunes."
But _Frances_--and "Spot" McGinty's! Surely I had not heard aright.
I faced him earnestly. "I--er--Judge Billings, do I understand you--that is, it can't be that you are speaking of--er--Frances?" I stammered incredulously. "I mean _your_ Frances--surely you are not!"
"I just am!" His jaw set with a snap. "Just who I'm talking about and nobody else, young man! I mean, _my_ Francis--Francis Leslie Billings--who else could I mean?" He almost groaned. "Oh, you don't _know_ Francis!"
Dash it, what they all chorused at me! They seemed pretty positive about it, too, and I was jolly miserable; but looking back now, I somehow think of that moment as being the point where I reached the parting of the what-you-call-'ems. Didn't know what to think, but knew I had to make up my mind right then and there--and for _always_, don't you know. Knew, of course, that it was just pure _luck_ that Frances cared for me--realized jolly well I wasn't particularly clever and all that, you know; but _she_ didn't seem to mind. It was then that it came to me all of a sudden that the only dashed thing in all the world that I could give _her_, that she didn't seem to have already from somebody, was--well just _trust_.
