With Mask and Mitt

by Albertus T. Dudley

Donald likewise sought diversion on his side. "What's this?" he called, pulling out a wad of striped cloth from under the edge of a blanket. "Seems to be wet."

"My pajamas!" groaned Clarence.

Now of course Donald knew what the wad was quite as well as Clarence; but the garments had been so folded and twisted and knotted inside and out that at first sight they offered a very decent impromptu imitation of Alexander's famous Gordian puzzle about which the juniors had been reading that very day in their histories. So it wasn't really so difficult for the evil-minded Peck to counterfeit surprise and curiosity as he turned the bundle in his hands and made ineffectual attempts to snap it out.

The other tormentor was ready with advice. "You'd better get those knots out right off. If you let 'em dry, you can't blow 'em apart with dynamite."

Clarence ground his teeth and set to work in silence. Donald was pretending to assist him. Duncan, with hands in his pockets, strolled over to the bedroom door, where it was safe to grin and gloat. This was rare fun! Other fellows had had their rooms stacked,—in fact, the Pecks' own room had been treated in much the same way the first year they were in school,—but no one yet had stacked a room and been present as sympathizer at the moment of discovery. And that fool Clarence needed the humiliation if ever a fellow did. "Prince of Bentonville" they called him at home, did they? (This delectable fact Reggie had imprudently confided to some faithless gossip, who joyously published it abroad.) There was no place for princes here, or babies either.

At the threshold of the bedroom the vandal paused and let his exultant gaze sweep the havoc-stricken room, from the glaring unshaded windows on the right, over the rectangles of dust on the floor where the beds had been, along the festoon of knotted neckties strung between light-fixture and radiator, to the heap of rugs crushed into the corner. On this corner his look hung, and the smirk of satisfaction on his pudgy countenance faded abruptly away. Here, on the only resting-place the dismantled room afforded, lay Reginald, face downward, sobbing his grief into the dusty folds.

Now Duncan, malefactor that he was, had his heart in the right spot. The sight of the little chap plunged in woe through his agency stirred him most unpleasantly. He knew at once that it was not vexation that produced the spasm of tears, but genuine homesickness, made poignant by this wanton act of an unknown enemy; and homesickness appealed to Duncan when weakness and babyishness received no tolerance. He had been homesick himself once, when Donald with scarlet fever monopolized the house and Duncan spent dreary weeks of banishment with a boy-hating aunt in the country. The misery of that exile was still a painful memory. Poor Reggie! They hadn't meant to discipline that little chap!

He put his hand on Reginald's shoulder. "Come, cheer up, Reggie! It isn't so bad as it looks. We'll soon make it all right again." But Reggie, ashamed of his tears, buried his nose still deeper in the rugs.

"Oh, cheer up!" repeated the comforter. "Lots of fellows have had just as big a stack in their rooms and simply laughed at it. Pluck up, and put your traps back and say nothing about it. That's the way to manage a thing like this. You're man enough for that, I know!"

Reggie sat up, struggling to choke back the sobs. The storm was going by.