Ward Hill, the Senior

by Everett T. Tomlinson

The boys laughed at Jack's declaration that he was about to try for the honors of the class, for they all knew that the impulsive boy was not over fond of study, and that the improvement in his class work had been almost entirely due to the efforts which Berry had made in his behalf.

"I don't see why it is," said Big Smith solemnly, "that I don't receive more recognition in the school. I've tried to do my best, and yet I'm left out of everything. It sometimes seems to me that if a fellow is wild, or gets into scrapes and then reforms, there's a good deal more of a time made over him than there is over a fellow who just plods on and never does anything bad at all. I can't understand it."

Ward's face flushed, for it seemed as if Big Smith meant to be personal. Perhaps the recent return of his own popularity was the more marked because of its very contrast with his previous record and position.

An angry reply rose to his lips, but in a moment the interview with Mr. Crane flashed into his mind, and he bit his lips and remained silent. "'Great-hearted,' 'large-minded,'" he thought. "I suppose Mr. Crane was trying to get me to stretch my soul a bit, and I'll try not to be petty and small to-day, anyway."

"Big Smith," said Jack solemnly, rising and moving his right arm up and down after the manner of a pump-handle as he spoke, "there's a great truth in what you say. I've suffered from the effects of it, lo, these seventeen years. I've often thought if I'd fallen into evil ways or joined in a few scrapes, that when the school saw, as the fellows all must see now, the mighty change in me, they'd give me a good deal more credit than they do. But they just take it all for granted, you see, and expect me to do well every time."

"You can laugh all you please," said Big Smith, "but it's true. Now look at Ward. He's been in more scrapes than I, for I never was in one since I came to Weston; but just see how all the fellows, or almost all of them, are talking him up on every side. They never talk in that way about me, and yet I've tried to do right all the time."

The angry word this time almost escaped Ward's lips, but before he could speak Jack quickly replied, and as Ward looked at Big Smith again he was glad he had not spoken. It was evident the big fellow was in "dead earnest," as the boys phrased it, and Ward thought he even saw traces of moisture in his eyes. Surprise overcame his feeling of resentment, and he stopped to listen to Jack, who had resumed his pump-handle gesture.

"The trouble with you, Big Smith, is that you are a prig. It isn't that you don't do wrong that makes the fellows feel toward you as they do. In their hearts there isn't a fellow who doesn't respect the chap who tries to do right, and they wish they were like him too. But you're a regular grandmother, Big Smith. You've been a big fellow in your own town, and when you went away to school you thought you were doing a big thing. Then you come up here and the first thing you do you go to reaching out and patting all the rest of us bad little boys on our heads. You rebuke us; you think we're all on the downward road because we don't do just what you want us to; and then you expect everybody to do for you instead of trying to be of some use to the fellows. Why, from the time last Mountain Day, when you left others to carry the luggage and then when night came took all of Pond's bedquilt to yourself, every fellow in the school thought you were for Big Smith first, last, and all the time."

"But I was cold that night," said Big Smith solemnly.

"And what did you think of Pond? And whose bedquilt did you think that was? Now Pond never was in any scrape, and yet the fellows all take to him. You're never in any scrape, either, but you've got to do more than that, let me tell you. You heard about the man who never said a foolish thing and never did a wise one, didn't you? Well, let me tell you that a fellow has got to have something more than negative goodness to make him count in the Weston school."