Although the expression was ambiguous, it served as a sort of sedative to the aching vacuity of the hours which Peter spent away from Siegel Brothers.
He found himself spending as many as possible of them with Miss Havens.
She had a way of making the frivolling talk of the supper table appear a warrantable substitute for the things that Peter knew, even while he echoed her phrases, that he wasn't getting.

He found himself skidding on the paths of self-improvement and the obligations of seeing life, along the edges of desolation.

He immersed himself as far as possible in the atmosphere of Blodgett's in order that he needn't have any time left in which to consider how far it fell short of what he had come to find.

For this reason he was usually the last at the supper table, but there were occasions when he found it discreet to slip away as early and quietly as possible.
It was one evening about two months after his instalment at Blodgett's.
Peter was sitting in his room when he heard them yammering at his door with so much hilarious insistence that he found himself getting up to open it, without giving himself time to put down the book he was reading or to take off the overcoat he had put on for want of a fire, and finding himself in some embarrassment because of the misapprehension which this fact involved.
"Ready, Peter ?" "Come along, Peter!" "I ...

I'm not going," said Peter.
"What?
Not going to the rink with us to-night?
Why, you said----" The bright group of his fellow boarders hung upon the narrow landing like bees at the threshold of a hive.
"I said I'd go if I could--" protested Peter, "and I can't." "Gee! What's the matter with you ?" "Don't be a beastly stiff!" "Come on, fellows, we'll miss the car.