“I guess not,” returned Fowle, emphatically. “If I could get him outside, I wouldn’t put up with anything from him!”
“Then if he gets in, order him out; if he won’t go, tell him you’ll hold him responsible for everything he does in the room, and get out yourself.”
“A lot of good that will do! He’d plug the gas jets, pour water in the bed, write things on my collars, and spoil things generally. And if I stayed, he’d be likely to do something to make me mad, and I’d wade into him. Then rough-house, noise, and home I’d go.”
It was indeed a hard problem that poor Birdie faced: if he defended himself against aggression, he committed lèse-majesté against Mr. Alsop by having a rough-house, and the sentence hanging over him would be executed; if he endured in patience, his possessions would be wrecked before his eyes; if he reported the facts, he transgressed the one law of which all schoolboys, good and bad, despise the breaker.
“Come down here the next time he gets in,” proposed Sam, at length, “and let me go up and settle him. You can prove an alibi if anything happens, and I’m not on probation.”
A fortnight passed. Sam, busy with studies and track practice, had ceased to think of Birdie as in immediate danger. Moorhead, Fish’s unfortunate room-mate, had proposed to room with Sam the next year, and Sam, feeling that it would be better for him to live with the quiet, studious scholar than with some more lively but less helpful chum, had consented. The interests of the present and plans for the future absorbed his attention. He was gaining in French and in Mr. Alsop’s esteem; he was really beginning to hope for a recommendation in the subject for the college preliminaries. Collins kept him encouraged in the hurdles. Unless some better man appeared, he seemed sure of a place on the track team as Fairmount’s understudy. Altogether he felt satisfied with himself and at peace with the world.
But it is hard to keep at peace with the world, if the world makes unjust war upon one’s friends. Fowle, returning to his room from Greek one morning, neglected to secure his door. He hadn’t been in his desk chair ten minutes when some one pushed the door open, looked in, and cried, “Honk, honk!” It was Fish!
“Keep out!” called Fowle. “I’m on pro.”
“That don’t scare me,” said Fish, as he shut the door behind him and sauntered across the room.
On the table lay the first sheet of a theme, neatly copied. Fish dipped a pen in the ink, and shook a blot on the outspread page.