He had been posing and strutting in their eyes till after midnight. And he had overslept.
He saw all these damning facts, as the accusing explanation of his lateness, while he was still confronting the face of the clock. Consequently, he asked the operative, with a schoolboy air of innocence: “What’s he want to see me about?”
He was leading up to a preliminary rehearsal of his interview with Babbing. The man paused in his typewritting long enough to verify the last word that he had written; then he went on again, impatiently; and Barney was left to face Babbing, and the score of his delinquencies, with no defense but the open countenance of virtue.
He went, but he went unconfident.
He had always been able to invent explanations and excuses that would pass muster in the schoolroom; and he had had a boy’s contempt for the gullibility of his elders; but Babbing had given him more respect for adult perspicacity. He could never tell how much
