“There’s a lesson in it.”

“I also fail to see the lesson”—Will, sweeping a comb through his hair. He was very vain about his hair, the thickest hair Nathaniel had ever seen. “Y’know, Herbie, that’s just the sort of non sequitur I’ve come to expect from Dartmouth men.”

“Mmmmmm,” replied Herb Wheeler, with a secret smile, as if he found Will’s failure to see irony and lesson amusing. “You Elis.”

“Will’s no longer an Eli, as we all do know,” Van Slyck said. “So maybe he’ll be a Dartmouth man soon, if they let such a rotter in.”

Nathaniel looked at Will.

“The president of Yale College has seen fit to request that I not reappear for my third year in the fall.”

Will lit another cigarette and smiled furtively.

“Did you fail?” Nathaniel asked.

“It was a question of his conduct,” Burton explained. “A scandal not meant for young ears.”

“Oh, they’re not that young, Tony. Expect they know babies don’t come from storks, and if they don’t, they ought to. It was this way, Natters. A freshman down the hall had not been properly raised. His father failed to give him two dollars and send him to a proper establishment when he reached eighteen. He seemed distressed by his innocent condition, so I decided to act, so to speak, in loco parentis, and brought him to a place I know near the port in New Haven. Madame Zygote or Zagreb, some foreign name like that. It was our misfortune to be in this establishment when the town fathers, in one of those spasms of civic virtue for which Connecticut is famous, had instructed the police to raid houses of ill repute. Election next year, you know. Wanted to look good to the voters. The young man in question was in the midst of his introduction to manhood when the cops arrived. Arrested everyone, ladies and customers alike. Made the local yellow press. The reporter found it irresistible that two Yale men had got caught in the sordid business, and played up that angle. Next day, after I bailed us out, the ex-virgin and I were called in by the dean, whereupon the ex-virgin, seeking to save his own unworthy skin, ratted on me and then some. Said I’d not only given him the money but more or less dragooned him into going to Madame Zygote’s or Zagreb’s. The dean went to the president. I was already on thin ice for a previous offense—won’t go into that now—and the president wrote me a letter, stating that I could finish out the term, but please do not return for the next.”

Drew was leaning far forward, his arms folded across his stomach, as if he were still seasick.

“I don’t understand,” he said.

“Told you they were too young,” said Burton. Then Eliot to his younger brother: