“Because it suits His Royal Highness to keep you two apart,” said Jones. “He thinks you wouldn’t study anything but plans for mischief.”
“Is that any of his business?” cried Lester, who was very indignant. “He and Don throw on altogether too many airs. I wish we could think up some way to get those straps off his shoulders.”
“That is simply impossible,” said Enoch. “He will be the ranking captain next year, and Don will be lieutenant-colonel. You wait and see. They have succeeded in getting on the blind side of the teachers, and their promotion is a dead sure thing.”
“Couldn’t he be drawn into a scrape that would do the business for him?” asked Dale.
Lester and Jones both answered that he could not. Bert was one of the good little boys, and had never learned how to disobey any of the rules. There had been a time, they said, when his brother Don could be induced to join in anything that had fun and danger in it; but he was major of the battalion now, and besides, Egan and the fellows who belonged to that crowd had so much influence over him that it would be useless to approach him on the subject of “scrapes.”
“And dangerous as well,” chimed in Enoch. “He has an uncomfortable habit of telling the truth at all times and on all occasions, and if he is caught, he will own right up.”
“He did that very thing the year before I came here, and brought some jolly boys into serious trouble by it,” observed Lester.
“Humph!” exclaimed Dale, contemptuously. “I wouldn’t have any intercourse with such a milk-sop.”
“He’s no milk-sop, and there is no boy in school who dares call him that to his face, either,” said Jones, who, in his heart, admired Don Gordon, and earnestly wished that he was like him in some respects. “It is true that he has too much honor to lie himself out of a scrape, but he won’t go back on a friend.”
“I don’t see how you make that out,” snapped Lester, who never could bear to hear a civil word said about either of the Gordon boys.