They were walking so slowly that their advance was almost imperceptible, but it could be seen that Dora was talking with great animation; and she was a graceful thing, thus gesticulating, in her long, slim fur coat with the white snow frosting her brown fur cap.  Ramsey had his hands deep in his overcoat pockets and his manner was wholly that of an audience.

Fred murmured to himself, “‘What did you say to her?’ ‘Nothin’.  I started to, but’—­” Then he put on a burst of speed and passed them, sweeping off his hat with operatic deference, yet hurrying by as if fearful of being thought a killjoy if he lingered.  He went to the “frat house,” found no one downstairs, and established himself in a red leather chair to smoke and ruminate merrily by a great fire in the hall.

Half an hour later Ramsey entered, stamped off the snow, hung up his hat and coat, and sat himself down defiantly in the red leather chair on the other side of the fireplace.

“Well, go on,” he said.  “Commence!”

“Not at all!” Fred returned, amiably.  “Fine spring weather to-day.  Lovely to see all the flowers and the birds as we go a-strolling by.  The little bobolinks—­”

“You look here!  That’s the only walk I ever took with her in my life.  I mean by—­by asking her and her saying she would and so forth.  That other time just sort of happened, and you know it.  Well, the weather wasn’t just the best in the world, maybe, but she’s an awful conscientious girl and once she makes an engagement—­”

“Why, of course,” Fred finished for him, “She’d be too pious to break it just on account of a mere little blizzard or anything.  Wonder how the weather will be next Sunday?”

“I don’t know and I don’t care,” said Ramsey.  “You don’t suppose I asked her to go again, do you?”

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, you don’t suppose I want her to think I’m a perfect fool, do you?”

Fred mused a moment or two, looking at the fire.  “What was the lecture?” he asked, mildly.

“What lecture?”

“She seemed to me to be—­”

“That wasn’t lecturing; she was just—­”

“Just what?”

“Well; she thinks war for the United States is coming closer and closer—­”

“But it isn’t.”

“Well, she thinks so, anyhow,” said Ramsey, “and she’s all broken up about it.  Of course she thinks we oughtn’t to fight and she’s trying to get everybody else she can to keep working against it.  She isn’t goin’ home again next summer, she’s goin’ back to that settlement work in Chicago and work there among those people against our goin’ to war; and here in college she wants to get everybody she can to talk against it, and—­”

“What did you say?” Fred asked, and himself supplied the reply:  “Nothin’.  I started to, but—­”

Ramsey got up.  “Now look here!  You know the ‘frat’ passed a rule that if we broke any more furniture in this house with our scrappin’ we’d both be fined the cost of repairs and five dollars apiece.  Well, I can afford five dollars this month better than you can, and—­”