Dunn was questioned in the office in a most unpleasant secret session, while the fifth in their Latin room were forced to trace the route between Mike’s desk and the waste-basket. When the different stations on this underground railroad were located, and the shoe was produced by the boy who had consigned it to its last resting-place, the guilty received the regular penalty for small misdemeanors, and the Latin lesson took its usual course.
Dunn’s session was longer. He emerged with a very red face, and sat with a book open before him, staring angrily and unprofitably at its pages for many minutes. He was very late for football practice for several days after, on an excuse that was evidently valid. This, however, might have been but a passing experience, forgotten in a fortnight, had not a heartless sally from Wilmot perpetuated the memory of the unpleasantness and given Mike a telling advantage over his bigger foe.
As was to be expected, Dunn had no history lesson that morning. He never did compass more than half a lesson, but to-day he was as ignorant on the subject of Greek Oracles and Greek Colonization as the Esquimau in his hut of ice on the edge of No Man’s Land.
More than this, he showed himself distrait, and totally impervious to the cleverly pointed shafts with which Mr. Downs sought to pierce a way to thick-crusted brains. The patient instructor, ignorant, of course, of the disturbance of the morning, and faithful to duty even under discouraging circumstances, detained Dunn after the class was dismissed for recess to admonish him of the evil consequences of idleness and inattention. As a result, Dunn arrived at the lunch room late, facing with an uneasy and unnatural grin a full collection of unsympathetic teases.
“Jason!” cried Wilmot, loudly. “Beware of the man with one shoe!”
About one first class boy in five understood the reference, and this one was immediately besought by his four ignorant companions to explain the joke, for joke they were sure it must be. Johnny Cable, the book-learned but otherwise incapable, was in excessive demand for the next few minutes to clear up the mystery. These few minutes Dunn employed in strengthening his defence of indifference and preparing himself for the coming questions as to what Mr. Westcott had said to him, and what he was going to do to Mike. He answered the questions in very ambiguous terms, but his threats against the chief agent in his misfortunes were no less awful because of their vagueness, while the grins of a dozen fifth class boys at the long table opposite kept his wrath at the boiling-point. Ben Tracy at last succeeded in diverting the general interest to Redfield, who had made a new record that morning in the smashing of glass tubes in the laboratory.
But the fifth were not to be diverted. They had no need of Cable’s learning to explain Wilmot’s comparison. Having fought their way, line by line, through sundry tales of Greek heroes presented in simple Latin, they knew the stories from end to end. “Jason Dunn!” they whispered ecstatically to one another along the table. The names fitted as if made to go together. No combination could be better!
“We’ll call him Jason after this,” proposed Dickie Sumner, Jack’s younger brother. “Nobody can help saying it after he’s heard it once.”
This suggestion was put into practice as soon as the youngsters left the table. They gathered at the door and sang out in chorus three times before they scattered: “Jason Dunn! Jason Dunn! What has Jason done?”
“Fresh little mutts!” exclaimed Tracy, in disgust. “That’s the result of being tied up with a kindergarten. Let’s go out and wring their necks!”