In the morning he was surprised to find that he felt so little ashamed.  Geary and young Haight treated the matter as a huge joke and told him of certain funny things he had said and done and which he had entirely forgotten.  It was impossible for him to take the matter seriously even if he had wished to, and within a few weeks he was drunk again.  He found that he was not an exception; Geary was often drunk with him, fully a third of all the Harvard men he knew were intoxicated at different times.  It was out of the question for Vandover to consider them as drunkards.  Certainly, neither he nor any of the others drank because they liked the beer; after the fifth or sixth glass it was all they could do to force down another.  Such being the case, Vandover often asked himself why he got drunk at all.  This question he was never able to answer.

It was the same with gambling.  At first the idea of playing cards for money shocked him beyond all expression.  But soon he found that a great many of the fellows, fellows like young Haight, beyond question steady, sensible and even worthy of emulation in other ways, “went in for that sort of thing.”  Every now and then Vandover’s “crowd” got together in his room in Matthew’s, and played Van John “for keeps,” as they said, until far into the night.  Vandover joined them.  The stakes were small, he lost as often as he won, but the habit of the cards never grew upon him.  It was like the beer, he “went in for it” because the others did, without knowing why.  Geary, however, drew his line at gambling; he never talked against it or tried to influence Vandover, but he never could be induced to play “for keeps” himself.

One very warm Sunday afternoon in the first days of April, when the last snows were melting, Vandover and Geary were in their room, sitting at opposite ends of their window-seat, Geary translating his Monday’s “Horace” by the help of a Bonn’s translation, Vandover making a pen and ink drawing for the next Lampoon.  A couple of young women passed down the walk, going across the Yard toward the Square.  They were cheaply and showily dressed.  One of them wore a mannish shirtwaist, with a high collar and scarf.  The other had taken off her gloves and was swinging a bright red cape in one of her bare hands.  As the couple passed they stared calmly at the two young fellows in the window; Vandover lowered his eyes over his work, blushing, he could not tell why.  Geary stared back at them, following them with his eyes until they had gone by.

All at once he began laughing and pounding on the window.

“Oh, for goodness sake, quit!” exclaimed Vandover in great alarm, twisting off the window-seat and shrinking back out of sight into the room.  “Quit, Charlie; you don’t want to insult a girl that way.”  Geary looked at him over his shoulder in some surprise, and was about to answer when he turned to the window again and exclaimed, grinning and waving his hand: