“He doesn’t smoke much, I can assure you,” Mulcahy broke in quickly. “I think he was tempted to try a cigarette to-night to comfort himself over our defeat.”
Mr. Alsop sniffed the air. “There’s more than one cigarette in the atmosphere of this room.”
Sam raised his eyes sullenly to the teacher’s, shot a swift, significant glance at Mulcahy, and looked out across the table at the red banner upon the wall. He said nothing, for there was nothing that he could say.
“There’s a great difference between not smoking at all and smoking a little,” the teacher continued in a severe lecture tone. “As I have explained, we do not forbid smoking, except to scholarship men; we try to discourage it all we can, because we consider it harmful. You told me that you did not smoke. I find you smoking. You have not been honest with me.”
Mr. Alsop paused to give Archer an opportunity to reply. Sam racked his brain for some non-committal form of words, and found none. “Yes, sir,” he said desperately.
“He probably thought, sir, that he smoked so little that it was practically none at all,” interposed Mulcahy. “I’ve never seen him smoking before to-night.”
“He should have said so, then,” declared Mr. Alsop, addressing Mulcahy. “My question was a friendly one and should have been frankly answered.” He faced the culprit again, who, with angry red cheeks and hostile, defiant eyes, now looked squarely at him. “I want to be helpful to you, Archer, but I can’t be that unless you trust me. If you had been honest with me, I shouldn’t have said anything different to you then from what I am saying now, but it would have been pleasanter for you to hear. Any smoking at all is bad for a boy of your age. The habit will grow on you, if once you get it, in spite of you. It will interfere with your physical and mental growth, and unfit you to do your best in studies or in athletics.”
“Yes, sir,” said Sam, whose indignation over the unfair treatment which he was enduring did not prevent his recognizing the truth of the instructor’s words.
“Good night!”
With this abrupt salutation, Mr. Alsop went his way downstairs, wholly satisfied with his own conduct, but confessing serious disappointment with certain of the boys under his care. If only Archer were as straightforward, and Fowle as orderly, as John Fish, the well would be less a source of uneasiness to him and less damaging to his pride. Archer evidently needed watching; and Fowle—well, Fowle would certainly have to go before the end of another term. That boy’s perpetual disregard of rules and apparent contempt for authority were unendurable!