“How do you like the games?” the doctor asked abruptly.
“Awfully. I didn’t know if I should or not, you know, but I do, most awfully.”
“That’s good.”
“Some fellows funk things, you know, their first term—House-runs especially. There was one boy who tried to get a medical exemption after his first run. He tried to pretend he had a heart, you know. But of course it was no go, and some of the fellows found out.”
“H’m. I wouldn’t give much for your friend’s popularity after that.”
“Well, it was a rotten sort of thing to do, wasn’t it?” said Cecil seriously. “I can understand it in a way, because it was my first term, too, of course, and one does find it a most awful sweat, just at first. But I just stuck it out, like other fellows. I must say I can’t understand trying to get out of anything in that sort of way.” He eyed the doctor thoughtfully.
“It seems extraordinary, somehow, to have thought of doing a thing like that,” he said. “It would never have occurred to me, anyway.”
Into the doctor’s kind, watchful eyes there came a sudden gleam, as of enlightenment. He looked at Cecil without speaking.
“Of course, I don’t set up for being braver than other people—far from it—but I do think it’s stupid to try and fake illness so as to get out of things. It only means that they don’t believe one another time, and one gets a reputation for slackness besides—and then they work one all the harder. That’s how I felt about the whole thing—it was such a stupid thing to have done.”
“To tell a lie is almost always a stupid thing to do,” said the doctor gently.