Seed on the Wind

She was as tolerant as the next one, she asserted, but Pete Halliday was a little too much. She didn’t know what Stubby Mallinson could have been thinking of to take him to the Ranleys’. All the boys agreed, even Stubby, that he was the most notorious character at the university; the only reason he hadn’t been kicked out was that he was so clever they couldn’t prove anything on him. It appeared that he would now be permitted to remain until June and get his diploma, that was true; it was also true that in the classes he condescended to attend he was insufferably brilliant; but he was a liar and a thief and a sneak. He was suspected on good grounds of things like stealing overcoats and selling them, things too petty and disgusting to talk about. When some of the boys made certain arrangements regarding examination questions he squealed on them. He exhibited a compromising letter which he had received from the wife of one of the professors, and then left it where the professor was sure to find it. Proof? No, he always arranged it so there should be no proof. He stole an automobile which belonged to one of the students and ran it off a pier into Lake Michigan...

“I know,” said Lora, “he told me about it. He said the student said all poetry should have a moral purpose. Anyway he said it didn’t do any good because he found out later that the insurance company paid for it.”

“Why shouldn’t poetry have a moral purpose?”

“I don’t know, I never read poetry. Neither do you.”

“I might. That doesn’t help matters anyhow. You know very well he’s not a decent person. You’re just being contrary; you’re just doing this out of spite.”

“I don’t see that it spites anyone.”

“All right; you’ll be sorry.”

It was around midnight, and they were getting ready for bed. Pete Halliday had left only ten minutes before; it had been his third or fourth visit; Cecelia had returned from the theatre just before his departure. She sat now on the edge of the bed massaging her scalp with her fingers, with her blond bobbed hair flying first this way then that; all of her fair white body was exposed save where the flimsy silk underwear, the straps slipped from the shoulders, had fallen about her middle; one stocking was off and the other was in loose folds about the knee. Lora, in a long yellow nightgown, to her ankles, her feet bare, with a toothbrush in her hand headed for the bathroom, stopped to fasten her regard on her friend with her eyebrows down.

“Look here, Cece,” she said, “you can be nasty about Pete if you want to. Your dumb friends, too. You might as well shut up.”

“If it’s a question of being dumb—” the other began; but Lora had gone into the bathroom, so she raised her voice: “What do you mean my dumb friends? They’re yours as much as mine.”

There was no answer save the sound of the running faucet and the swish of the toothbrush. Cecelia hauled off the other stocking with a tug and threw it at a chair.