XXX.

At dinner, in the absence of the butler, Alan Lynde attacked his sister
across the table for letting herself be seen with a jay, who was not only
a jay, but a cad, and personally so offensive to most of the college men
that he had never got into a decent club or society; he had been
suspended the first year, and if he had not had the densest kind of cheek
he would never have come back. Lynde said he would like to know where she
had picked the fellow up.

She answered that she had picked him up, if that was the phrase he liked,
at Mrs. Bevidge's; and then Alan swore a little, so as not to be heard by
their aunt, who sat at the head of the table, and looked down its length
between them, serenely ignorant, in her slight deafness, of what was
going on between them. To her perception Alan was no more vehement than
usual, and Bessie no more smilingly self-contained. He said he supposed
that it was some more of Lancaster's damned missionary work, then, and he
wondered that a gentleman like Morland had ever let Lancaster work such a
jay in on him; he had seen her 'afficher' herself with the fellow at
Morland's tea; he commanded her to stop it; and he professed to speak for
her good.

Bessie returned that she knew how strongly he felt from the way he had
misbehaved when she introduced him to Mr. Durgin, but that she supposed
he had been at the club and his nerves were unstrung. Was that the
reason, perhaps, why he could not make his latchkey work? Mr. Durgin
might be a cad, and she would not say he was not a jay, but so far he had