Tom wondered whether Captain Hawkesbury would call and inquire after him, but he did not like to ask. After all, he did not much care. There was no love lost between them, and there was no use in pretending. Still, in all decency the captain might have called.
Tom was not as well next day as he had hoped to be, nor did he progress as the doctor evidently expected. The medical man frowned a little, thinking perhaps his patient did not see this sign. But if Tom saw he did not much care. He was too ill.
For the next two days Tom was on the border line between progressing favorably and going back. Then came the turn in his favor. Tom’s fever left him and he was cool, though weak. He began to take an interest in matters, and was allowed to see his chums who called on him. They had called every day, of course, but up to this time, they had not been admitted to the sickroom.
As for Captain Hawkesbury, he probably learned of Tom’s condition, but it was not because he inquired.
“It’s a mean thing to think, much less to say,” mused Tom, as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling, “but it looks to me as though Captain Hawkesbury is glad I’m laid up. And I think he’d be glad if I was so knocked out that I’d have to withdraw from the Academy. Yes, I’ll go farther and say I think he deliberately rode into me so I would get disabled. I don’t claim he actually wanted to injure me seriously, but he may have thought a little knocking about would take the starch out of me, and cause me to resign. But I’ll not!”
Tom looked out of the window musingly.
“I’m going to stick!” he told himself, firmly, “and I’m going after Captain Hawkesbury and Mr. Doolittle harder than ever. That’s what I’m going to do!”
Tom clenched his fists under the bedclothes—that is he tried to, but gave it up with a wince of pain, for one of his arms had been badly wrenched.
“Well, how are you feeling, old man?” asked Sam, a little later, as he came in to see his chum.
“Oh, so-so.”