Loneliness was at least one misery that the afflicted schoolmaster did not have to experience. His colleagues were all attentive to him and tried to relieve the monotony of the hours. Among the older boys were many who came to see him in his rooms and offered their services for reading or for guiding him on walks or for writing at his dictation. He welcomed them all, he gave each one the pleasure of doing something for him and himself took pleasure in the friendly thought, but it soon became evident that there were two or three out of the whole number of volunteers on whom he especially depended. Mr. Randolph, the English teacher, and Mr. Delange, the French teacher, were his most intimate and devoted friends among the masters; but on David even more than on them he seemed to rely for little services. Thus it was David that every morning after breakfast walked with him to chapel; it was David that led him back to his house at the end of the daily fifth-form Latin recitation; it was David that usually conducted him in the afternoons to the athletic grounds. Always an interested observer of the sports, Mr. Dean declared now that he would continue to follow them even if he could not see; and so on almost every pleasant day during the recreation hour he was to be found seated on the piazza of the athletic house that overlooked the running track and the playing field. One boy after another would come and sit beside him and tell him what was going on; in the intervals of their activity ball-players and runners would visit him and receive a word of congratulation for success or of joking reproof for failure; sometimes he would ask his companion of the moment not to enlighten him as to the progress of the game, but to let him guess from the sounds and the shouts what was taking place; his pleasure when he guessed correctly was enthusiastic and touching.
“Try watching a game sometime with your eyes shut,” he suggested to David. “You’d find there’s a certain amount of interest in it. You’ll be surprised to find how successfully ears are capable of substituting for eyes.”
Just then Lester Wallace, who had made a run in the Pythians’ practice game, came up saying, “How are you, Mr. Dean? This is Wallace.”
“Good; that was a fine clean hit of yours just now. I said to David the moment I heard the crack, ‘There goes a base hit.’ Don’t forget that the Pythians need your batting, Wallace.”
“That’s one thing I wanted to ask you about, Mr. Dean.” Wallace glanced at David somewhat sheepishly. “When do you think I’ll get off probation?”
“I wouldn’t undertake to predict about that.” If there was no longer any twinkle behind the dark glasses that Mr. Dean now wore, there was a genial puckering of the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “But I can tell you perhaps when you’ll have an opportunity to get off probation. The game with the Corinthians is a week from to-day, isn’t it? Well, you come to me in the noon intermission that day, and I’ll give you an oral examination.”
“You don’t think I could get off any earlier?”
“I’m very much afraid, Wallace, that you need all the time I can give you.”
“Haven’t my recitations been better lately, Mr. Dean?”