“Corner him! you ought to have seen me wind him up last night! There wasn’t as much left of him as would point off a fraction. If he had been as slow with his moves as he was in getting to school this morning, he might have done better. How’s that tardy mark going to look on the report, my man? ’Twont help much towards your three hundred, eh?”
“I wasn’t tardy!” answered Tom defiantly, for the question of the three hundred was too tender to bear touching.
“Oh, you weren’t!” cried Hal. “Wasn’t he, boys? you saw as well as I did.”
“Didn’t he get in?” asked one of the boys. “I didn’t see.”
“Get in!” said Ned Farraday, taking up the keynote Hal had given; “I should think not much! The door was shut fair and square before it saw his shadow. If anybody don’t believe it they can look on the book and see.”
“Look on the book and see,” set up a chorus of voices on all sides.
“I tell you there’s no mark there,” declared Tom again, getting very red, and the miserable feeling that had got as far as his pockets last night, was running down to his very boots.
“I wouldn’t say much about marks if I were you, Ned Farraday,” called out a boy a little larger than he. “I heard the professor call your Latin a failure, and that marks you down to six, and you know very well if Tom was tardy it only marks him eight.”
Ned grew red in his turn and drew in his horns at once, but Hal went on.
“I say, Checkmaty, how long has Eheu been a noun? Ever since it meant a lass, hasn’t it?”