He coughed, made several attempts to speak, finally began: "Your first year at Harvard, you spent seventeen hundred dollars.

Your second year, you spent fifty-three hundred.

Last year--Are all your bills in ?" "There are a few--" murmured Arthur.
"How much ?" He flushed hotly.
"Don't you know ?" With this question his father lifted his eyes without lifting his shaggy eyebrows.
"About four or five thousand--in all--including the tailors and other tradespeople." A pink spot appeared in the left cheek of the old man--very bright against the gray-white of his skin.

Somehow, he did not like that word "tradespeople," though it seemed harmless enough.

"This last year, the total was," said he, still monotonously, "ninety-eight hundred odd--if the bills I haven't got yet ain't more than five thousand." "A dozen men spend several times that much," protested Arthur.
"What for ?" inquired Hiram.
"Not for dissipation, father," replied the young man, eagerly.
"Dissipation is considered bad form in our set." "What do you mean by dissipation ?" "Drinking--and--all that sort of thing," Arthur replied.