“My life plans don’t make any difference, do they?”
“You haven’t any. You don’t need to have any. A fellow in your position, with all the bills paid for you, and everything provided for years to come, doesn’t know what it is to have to struggle along with your head just above water, always afraid a big wave will roll up and swamp you.”
“Why didn’t you think of that when you lighted the cigarettes?” demanded Sam, roughly. “What business have you to smoke at all? You know the rules.”
“The rules are silly for a man of my age,” returned Mulcahy. “If I’d known Alsop was going to butt in, of course I wouldn’t have done it.”
“It’s done now, anyway,” sighed Archer, looking at his watch. “I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to do some studying to-night. I can’t let Alsop flunk me to-morrow, after this.”
“I’m going,” said the visitor. He held out his hand with his best, most flattering smile. “Good-by, Sammy. You showed yourself the right sort of a friend to-night. I shan’t forget it.”
“Nor I,” thought Sam, as he gave back a feeble pressure and muttered a return good-night.
When Mulcahy was gone, Sam sat down by the lamp with his books spread out before him. For a long time, however, he let his eyes stray past them to the shaded corner of the room, while with tight-pressed lips and wrinkled brow he considered his experiences since he came to Seaton, and pronounced himself a fool. He had not been a fool in every respect, it was true; he hadn’t been fresh, or boastful about himself, and he had not done things flagrantly wrong, but he saw clearly that many of his judgments had been mistaken. Strangely enough, the irritating incident of the evening did not so greatly depress him. He felt a certain satisfaction in the superiority of his behavior as compared with Mulcahy’s, which served to offset the uneasiness caused by the teacher’s error. But he did wish that he hadn’t committed himself so far to intimacy with Mulcahy, and he regretted that he had invited him home for Sunday.
In the distractions of the evening, Sam overlooked one part of the French lesson for the next day. Mr. Alsop had given notice of a test on vocabulary, a comparatively easy matter to prepare if he had only remembered to study it. He was unpleasantly reminded of this omission at the recitation next morning, when Mr. Alsop announced that all those who failed to write correctly the English equivalents of twenty of the twenty-five French words on the paper, must come to a “make-up” on Saturday at five. Sam had forgotten to study his vocabulary. He struggled over the list, and succeeded in getting but eighteen of the twenty-five. On Saturday morning Mr. Alsop read his name among those doomed to the five-o’clock make-up.
To be present at five o’clock on Saturday meant a late train home and the evening spoiled. Sam had secured out-of-town permission from the office, and had arranged to escort his mother to a meeting of his old school athletic association in the evening. It seemed hard—unjust—to be cut off from this prearranged visit, in order to take an exercise which involved hardly five minutes and could be as well taken at some other time. So the boy, having fretted and reviled for an hour, called at Mr. Alsop’s room, and after explaining that the make-up would prevent his going home, offered to take it in the instructor’s room immediately after his return.