“I’m sorry,” was all that Tommy could say.
Sexton stood looking at him a moment longer, and then went out and closed the door behind him.
Tommy, shutting all thought of the trouble from his mind as well as he could, turned again to his history. That evening, when he went down to dinner, it was with the comfortable consciousness that he was ready for the next day’s lesson. But his satisfaction was of short duration. As he took his seat at table, instead of the hearty welcome he had grown accustomed to, there was a frigid silence. One or two of the boys nodded to him as he looked up and down the board, but very distantly. Tommy felt a lump rise in his throat as he gulped down his food, and began to understand what his new resolution was going to cost him. Then his mouth tightened, and he looked around defiantly, as though daring them to do their worst.
CHAPTER XI
A GLIMPSE OF PRINCETON
The days that followed were not pleasant ones for Tommy, and more than once he went to bed with sore heart, after a particularly trying day. It was not that he was persecuted or interfered with, or that anything was done to him that would call for the head-master’s interference; none of the boys descended to that, though he might have even welcomed a little persecution, for it was the other extreme that irked him. He was left to himself. He was taboo. At table, the talk excluded him. On the campus, no one saw him. In the class-room, no one seemed interested in whether he recited well or badly, or whether he recited at all. No one dropped in to chat with him in the evening, nor was he invited to any of the little gatherings the fellows were always having. Often, as he bent over his books in the evening, he would catch the tinkle of a banjo or a strain of college song, and his eyes blurred so with tears sometimes that he could not see the page before him. But it was only in the solitude of his room he permitted himself this weakness. To the world he showed a defiant face, and no one suspected how deeply he was hurt. After all, they were only boys, and it is not to be wondered at that, for the moment, victory on the football field appeared to them of more consequence than proficiency in class.
Two things comforted him somewhat. One was that he no longer went to his classes unprepared. Indeed, he worked at his books so savagely that he was soon in the first group of the class, and more than once the tutors went out of their way to commend him—though it was not for their commendation his heart was aching, but for that of his classmates. His other comfort was in a letter he had received from Mr. Bayliss in reply to the one he had written him telling of his quitting his football practice. The letter ran:
I need hardly tell you how I have rejoiced in your strength in making this decision and in sticking to it. Nothing would compensate for failure in your classes—not even the applause of the football field. But I can readily understand how much the decision must have cost you, and I think I can foresee how it will affect the bearing of your classmates toward you, for school-boys sometimes have a very exaggerated and false notion of school honor. Concerning this last, let me give you a word of advice. Next to success in study, there is no more precious thing in college life than class friendship. One can well afford to sacrifice much to gain it. So I would not have you antagonize your classmates unnecessarily. Be prepared to make some sacrifice for them—sacrifice of pride and convenience and time. Perhaps later in the year you may be so well up in your studies that you can afford again to take an active part in the school athletics. Do not hesitate to do so when you can.
“OFTEN, AS HE BENT OVER HIS BOOKS, HE WOULD CATCH THE TINKLE OF A BANJO OR A STRAIN OF COLLEGE SONG.”
Tommy read this letter over and over again, and drew much consolation from it. Gradually, too, some of the fellows began to unbend a little. Little Reeves, who had tackled him so gamely at that first day’s practice, was the first to show his friendship. It was one evening, while Tommy was wandering disconsolately about the campus, that he first became aware of Reeves’s feeling toward him.