Hollister’s eyes brightened as he gripped the proffered hand.
“You’re all to the good, Blair,” he said quickly. “Most fellows would have felt like kicking me downstairs.”
“I felt worse than that this afternoon,” the big guard grinned. “But nobody can stay mad with you very long, Bobby. Sit down and let’s hear about it.”
Hollister told the story briefly, and then, in spite of his friend’s urging, he departed to put in the rest of the evening in hard studying. Since it was the first time he had really applied himself to his books in weeks, he naturally did not make much progress, but at least it was a beginning.
The blow came the next morning, when the first mail brought him a letter from the dean’s office. He opened it with trembling fingers and glanced through the brief contents. The typewritten communication was short, terse, very much to the point, and bore the scrawly signature of the dean himself.
“Dear Sir: Since you have seen fit utterly to disregard my advice of a week ago, I am forced to tell you that unless you attain a grade of at least sixty in every recitation from now until the beginning of the winter vacation your name will be dropped from the rolls of the senior class.”
In perfect silence, jaws set and face a little pale, Hollister read the short note through the second time.
“Holy cats!” he muttered. “That’s the end of yours truly, all right! Sixty per cent.! Why don’t he say a hundred and be done with it? I stand about as much show of getting it.”
Now that it was too late, he saw with vivid clearness the extent of his amazing folly. Merriwell had done his utmost to make him realize the seriousness of his position a week ago. Jim had been trying his best to help him for a longer time than that. Even the dean had strained a point of college discipline in his favor. And in spite of all this he had gone his way blithely and blindly, living only in the present, with a perfectly suicidal disregard for the future.
What could he do? What was there possible for him to do? He was in despair. He had no more than a glimmering of the work for that day. It would need nothing less than a miracle for him to get the required percentage.