At the first opportunity the twins slipped away to their room, and locking the door securely, waited in awful anticipation for Tompkins’s knock. It did not come. The next day they ventured cautiously forth, and sought the protection of numbers when there was danger that the injured senior might suddenly appear from around a corner and wreak vengeance. But Tompkins, when he passed them, nodded pleasantly as if nothing had happened. On the third day he even dropped in after his old manner for a brief and friendly call. On the fourth he appeared with a comic paper in which he wished to show an amusing caricature, and spread it out on the desk. It was then that Nemesis came—swift, unexpected, terrible. As Duncan leaned guilelessly over the table, feasting his eyes on the cartoon, he felt the hair on the back of his head suddenly brushed up as by the hand of the barber testing its thickness. At the same time he heard a noise as of the sop of a sponge, and felt the chill of a cold liquid wetting his head and streaming down his neck.
“There!” said Tompkins, backing away and holding out a crimson sponge like a shield before him. “There’s a red that can’t be changed like a necktie. It’s good dye, this is, warranted to stand washing and not to wear off. I think I shall know you, my friend, the next time I see you.”
With these words the senior escaped, leaving the unhappy Duncan to make his toilet as best he could. There was much bathing that day in the twins’ abode, and shampooing that in point of thoroughness would have put to shame the efforts of an expert. The results were not encouraging. The crimson became but a shade lighter; while the scalp, scraped and worn by the process, showed vivid pink beneath. When it became apparent that home treatment would not avail to remove the glaring stain, they adjourned to the drug store, where they pleaded for advice and received only ridicule. A friendly barber finally came to their relief with the promise that by clipping off Duncan’s red locks and dying the stubble to match the rest, he could make him over as good as new. When the boy got down from the chair, however, he was horrified to find that though the gory hue had disappeared, the clipped portion was several shades darker than the color nature had intended it should bear, and of a different tone; and through the dark patch the skin still glistened a rosy pink.
“It’ll grow out in three or four weeks and I can cut it to the right color,” said the barber, with doubtful comfort. “People won’t notice it now till they git pretty clost.”
And herewith came an unforeseen break in the Peck solidarity. Donald declined absolutely to have his own hair cut and dyed to match; the weather was too cold and the bull’s-eye effect too conspicuous. Duncan must either grow hair or get a wig. All of which Duncan considered very unbrotherly and unfeeling. And Tompkins, having proved himself a dog that could bite as well as bark, was baited no longer.
Meantime Wolcott, having given up the society of Marchmont, was seeing more of others whom in his intimacy with the polished New Yorker he had neglected. There was no one of these whom he liked better to visit than Poole, partly because of the attractive personality of Poole himself, partly because of the pleasant company who habitually gathered in his study. Planter and Ware he often met there, while Durand, Morgan, Tompkins, Richardson of the Seatonian board, and Saybrook who drew the funny caricatures, also belonged to the set. Laughlin was made welcome as often as his many occupations would permit. With his different experience of life and greater seriousness, he was not an adept at the gay banter current among care-free fellows to whom the pleasant things of life came without effort. His presence, however, was never a damper on the merriment, while in the discussion of graver matters his opinion always carried weight. With Wolcott he talked chiefly about football, with the result that the interest and ambition of the new boy were constantly growing.
It was on the last evening before the school recess that Wolcott was publicly committed to the captain’s projects. A group of kindred spirits had gathered in Poole’s room, talking athletics as vigorously as if the subject had not been fundamentally discussed a hundred times before.
“The outlook is certainly bad,” Planter was saying. “The football is gone, and while we don’t want to think that we are going to lose the baseball too, the chances are certainly against us, and we haven’t any great show for track. If Dickinson and Todd and all those fellows could only tie Hillbury last year, I don’t see what we can expect with a green team. This looks like a mighty bad year for us, doesn’t it?”
“You oughtn’t to talk to a member of the nine about the nine’s losing,” Laughlin remarked with a jerk of his head toward Poole. “That’s not the spirit to begin the season with.”
“I suppose, then, if any one asks about your next football season, you’ll say you’re going to win,” retorted Planter.