"I don't care if it does!" panted Shorty. "I'd rather be killed than kept here any longer. I hope he will expel me. Then perhaps they'll let me go where I belong!" And in a torrent of wrath the youngster's swelling heart burst over all bounds, and he was led sobbing away.
Still dazed, half blind, and bleeding, Briggs was lifted to his feet. "It served you right, you hulking coward," said Joy, as he and Bertram led the battered object to the horse-trough in the stable. "You couldn't have insulted him more brutally."
"It's of no use," said the Doctor that evening, gravely, to a gray-haired grandsire, who was himself burning with longing to go to the front. "That boy can't study now. You see he was regularly enlisted as a drummer. He fully believed that when his regiment was called out that nothing could keep him back, and, boy-like, he has said so among his fellows,—probably bragged of it a little. He who had been so boastfully confident now has to stay and face the sneers of the school, while big boys of eighteen and nineteen like Dix and Julian have gone with the Seventh. It breaks his heart, my friend. There's no likelihood of fighting just now. The rebels won't be fools enough to attack Washington. Send him down there to his uncle. Let him have a taste of camp life. The city troops will come home as soon as the volunteers begin to arrive. In fact, if you don't there'll be incessant war right here at school."
"But there's his examination for college," said the head of the Primes, himself a don of Columbia.
"Well, didn't you assure Dix and Julian that Columbia would admit them without examination whenever they knocked at the doors? Didn't you at faculty meeting say that three seniors, who never could have got their diplomas in the world, should have their degrees without further question, despite the fact that they have dragged along at the foot of their class for the last two years, all just because of the fact that they have gone to the front with their regiments?"
"But then he's so small for his years," was the next objection.
"All the better soldier! Those big, long giants break down. Those stocky little fellows are the stayers. Besides," says Pop, with a twinkle in his eyes, "size doesn't seem to count for much. You—ought to have seen Briggs."
"Was he well pounded?" asked the head of the house, with interest ill becoming his years and station. Perhaps he is thinking of old, old days at "Harrow on the Hill," when he, too, had been under the ban for more than one forbidden fight.
"Halsey says he looked as though he'd been mauled by a wildcat;" and to save his reputation the Doctor cannot repress a grim smile.
"The young rascal!" says the head of the house.