So, step by step, with the countenance of some true and worthy friends, and by the help of a stout and uncorrupted heart, by penitence and by kindliness, did our brave little Walter win his way. He was helped, too, greatly, by his achievements in the games. At football he played with a vigour and earnestness which carried everything before it. He got several bases, and was the youngest boy in the school who ever succeeded in doing this. Gradually but surely his temporary unpopularity gave way; and even before he began to be generally recognised again, he bade fair ultimately to gain a high position in the estimation of all his schoolfellows.
There was one scene which he long remembered, and which was very trying to go through. One fine afternoon the boys’ prize for the highest jump was to be awarded, and as the school were all greatly interested in the competition, they were assembled in a dense circle in the green playground, leaving space for the jumpers in the middle. The fine weather had also tempted nearly all the inhabitants of Saint Winifred’s to be spectators of the contest, and numbers of ladies were present, for whom the boys had politely left a space within the circle. When the chief jumping prize had been won by an active fellow in the sixth-form, another prize was proposed for all boys under fifteen.
Bliss, Franklin, and two other boys at once stepped into the circle as competitors, and threw off their jackets.
“You must go in for this, Walter,” said Henderson. “You’re sure to get it.”
“Not I. I won’t go in, Flip,” said Walter, who was naturally in a desponding mood, as he looked round on those four hundred faces, and saw among them all scarcely one sympathising glance. “You go in and win. And never mind talking to me up here, Henderson; it can’t be pleasant for you, I know, when all the other fellows are cutting me.”
“Pooh! Walter. They’re in the wrong box; not you and I. ‘Athanasius contra mundum,’ as Power says. Do go in for the prize.”
Walter shook his head gloomily. “I don’t like to, before all these fellows. They’d hiss me or something.”
“Well, if you won’t, I won’t; that’s flat.”
“O do, Henderson. I’m sure you’d get it. Don’t ask me to go in, that’s a good fellow.”
“None but these four going in for the little jump? What, only four?” said one of the young athletes, who carried little blue flags, and arranged the preliminaries. “Come in some more of you.”