To-day was to be a sort of recapitulation of the previous fortnight's work in chemistry, and the stupid blunders made the previous day were more than atoned for, and at last when the boy had worked out a brilliant result that greatly surprised the master he said, 'Why, you must have been ill yesterday.'
'No, sir, I was well,' said Horace, seeing the master waited for an answer. 'I was well enough, but I was not quite happy.'
'Well, then, let me advise you to make yourself happy in future under any circumstances.' And then he added in an undertone, 'You are a scholarship lad, and we expect more from you than from some of the others.'
'Thank you, sir, I'll try,' said Horace; and throughout that day he did not find it hard to try, as the master had suggested.
The others had their eyes upon him, and were puzzled to account for his success. They had made up their minds the previous day that they would only have to carry on their present tactics for a short time, and Horace would leave the school in disgust, or else he would be asked to leave by the head master, and thus Torrington's would be saved from going to the dogs through this scholarship boy. But this day's experience of what Horace could do under the terrible ban of their displeasure puzzled them, and they resolved to watch more closely, to make sure none of those who were suspected of faltering in allegiance to the decree of their leaders did not speak to him on their way home.
But Horace himself did not expect this now. The first bitterness of the trial had worn off, and as soon as he was beyond the school gate he set off home at a sharp trot, softly whistling to himself, as he pondered over what would be the probable effect if a certain acid they had been using was mixed with another substance entirely different from anything they had used in that day's experiments.
He whistled and thought, and turned the matter over and over in his mind, and finally ended by wishing that his mother could afford to give him pocket-money like most boys had to spend. This cost him a sigh, as he thought he might as well wish for a slice of the moon at once as for pocket-money, and by the time he got home he was whistling to himself again as happily as ever.
When he got in, his mother noticed his eager, animated looks.
'Why, what has happened to make you so merry?' she said, as he threw up his cap in sheer exuberance of spirits.
'Nothing much, mother; only I have got an idea.'