“Does he ever go there?” asked a sharp voice behind them; and looking round Maud saw Fanny in the big chair, cooking her feet over the register.

“I never saw him there; he sent up some books one day, and Will teased her about it.”

“What did she do?” demanded Fanny.

“Oh, she shook him.”

“What a spectacle!” and Tom looked as if he would have enjoyed seeing it, but Fanny’s face grew so forbidding, that Tom’s little dog, who was approaching to welcome her, put his tail between his legs and fled under the table.

“Then there isn’t any ‘Sparking Sunday night’,” sung Tom, who appeared to have waked up again.

“Of course not. Polly isn’t going to marry anybody; she’s going to keep house for Will when he’s a minister, I heard her say so,” cried Maud, with importance.

“What a fate for pretty Polly!” ejaculated Tom.

“She likes it, and I’m sure I should think she would; it’s beautiful to hear ’em plan it all out.”

“Any more gossip to retail, Pug?” asked Tom a minute after, as Maud seemed absorbed in visions of the future.

“He told a funny story about blowing up one of the professors. You never told us, so I suppose you didn’t know it. Some bad fellow put a torpedo, or some sort of powder thing, under the chair, and it went off in the midst of the lesson, and the poor man flew up, frightened most to pieces, and the boys ran with pails of water to put the fire out. But the thing that made Will laugh most was, that the very fellow who did it got his trousers burnt trying to put out the fire, and he asked the—is it Faculty or President?”

“Either will do,” murmured Tom, who was shaking with suppressed laughter.

“Well, he asked ’em to give him some new ones, and they did give him money enough for a nice pair; but he got some cheap ones, with horrid great stripes on ’em, and always wore them to that particular class, ‘which was one too many for the fellows,’ Will said, and with the rest of the money he had a punch party. Wasn’t it dreadful?”

“Awful!” And Tom exploded into a great laugh, that made Fanny cover her ears, and the little dog bark wildly.

“Did you know that bad boy?” asked innocent Maud.

“Slightly,” gasped Tom, in whose wardrobe at college those identical trousers were hanging at that moment.

“Don’t make such a noise, my head aches dreadfully,” said Fanny, fretfully.

“Girls’ heads always do ache,” answered Tom, subsiding from a roar into a chuckle.

“What pleasure you boys can find in such ungentlemanly things, I don’t see,” said Fanny, who was evidently out of sorts.

“As much a mystery to you as it is to us how you girls can like to gabble and prink from one week’s end to the other,” retorted Tom.

There was a pause after this little passage-at-arms, but Fan wanted to be amused, for time hung heavily on her hands, so she asked, in a more amiable tone: