“Another lap and I shall have it,” he said to himself, gleefully, as he took his place again by the window.
The outside door opened and Poole came rushing into the study. “I want to tell you something, Dick, and I’ve just three minutes before Latin to tell it in—Whose hat is that?”
“Varrell’s,” said Dick, who had risen from the desk. “He’s in the bedroom plugging away at Shakespeare.”
“Hello, Varrell,” said Phil, looking in at the door. “Shakespeare plays havoc with the beds, doesn’t he?”
“Get out!” cried Varrell, waving him off; “you rattle me.”
Phil joined Dick on the other side of the room. Through the open door they could see the Shakespearean scholar doggedly muttering over his book.
“Shan’t we disturb him?” asked Phil, hesitating.
“Speak low and there’ll be no danger,” said Melvin. “His ears aren’t quick.”
The eleven o’clock bell soon broke in on the conversation, and sent the younger boy flying to his recitation. Dick sat down at the desk again and tried to take up his work where he had left it, but he was apparently in a very unstudious mood. His pencil no longer moved steadily over the paper; his gaze rested fitfully now here, now there, on the various objects before him; his flushed sober face showed that his thoughts were hot within him. Finally, he threw down his pencil in disgust, and sauntering over to the window, leaned his head against the sash and gazed moodily out.
“He’s a confounded rascal!” exclaimed Varrell, who had been eying his agitated comrade over the Shakespeare, “but it’s no fault of yours, and why do you bother yourself about him?”