Ted flushed angrily at that.  The shot went home, as the doctor intended it should.  He knew when to hit and how to do it hard, as Larry had testified.

“Fool’s cap if you like, Uncle Phil.  I am not a dunce.”

“I rather think that is true.  Anyway, prove it to us this summer and there is no one who will be gladder than I to take back the aspersion.  Is it understood then?  You have your house-party and when you come back you are pledged to honest work, no shirking, no requests for time off, no complaints.  Have I your word?”

Ted considered.  He thought he was paying a stiff price for his house-party and his lark with Madeline.  He could give up the first, though a fellow always had a topping time at Hal’s; but he couldn’t quite see himself owning ignominiously to Madeline that he couldn’t keep his promise to her because of empty pockets.  Moreover, as he had admitted, he would have to tutor anyway, probably, and he might as well get some gain out of the pain.

“I promise, Uncle Phil.”

“Good.  Then that is settled.  I am not going to say anything more about the flunking.  You know how we all feel about it.  I think you have sense enough and conscience enough to see it about the way the rest of us do.”

Ted’s eyes were down again now.  Somehow Uncle Phil always made him feel worse by what he didn’t say than a million sermons from other people would have done.  He would have gladly have given up the projected journey and anything else he possessed this moment if he could have had a clean slate to show.  But it was too late for that now.  He had to take the consequences of his own folly.

“I see it all right, Uncle Phil,” he said looking up.  “Trouble is I never seem to have the sense to look until—­afterward.  You are awfully decent about it and letting me go to Hal’s and—­everything.  I—­I’ll be gone about a week, do you mind?”

“No.  Stay as long as you like.  I am satisfied with your promise to make good when you do come.”

Ted slipped away quickly then.  He was ashamed to meet his uncle’s kind eyes.  He knew he was playing a crooked game with stacked cards.  He hadn’t exactly lied—­hadn’t said a word that wasn’t strictly true, indeed.  He was going to Hal’s, but he had let his uncle think he was going to stay there the whole week whereas in reality he meant to spend the greater part of the time in Madeline Taylor’s society, which was not in the bargain at all.  Well he would make up later by keeping his promise about the studying.  He would show them Larry wasn’t the only Holiday who could make good.  The dunce cap jibe rankled.

And so, having satisfied his sufficiently elastic conscience, he departed on Saturday for Springfield and adjacent points.

He had the usual “topping” time at Hal’s and tore himself away with the utmost reluctance from the house-party, had half a mind, indeed, to wire Madeline he couldn’t come to Holyoke.  But after all that seemed rather a mean thing to do after having treated her so rough before, and in the end he had gone, only one day later than he had promised.