“Well, why don’t you go to Gumshoe and tell him?”
“Oh, I’ve tried,” said Finch. “That’s worse.”
“It’s a beastly shame,” said Tony. “But there’s nothing I can do; I’m in with Gumshoe worse than ever.”
“And that’s all my fault!”
“Not a bit,” said Tony. “I had no business to write that thing in the first place; neither had Jimmie for that matter,—about Gumshoe or anybody else. I wish I could convince him that I am really sorry.”
“Well, I guess you can’t do that,” said Finch. “But if I had not been so stupid it wouldn’t have happened. To tell you the truth, Deering, I often wish I had never come here.”
“That’s idiotic!” said Tony; and then asked tactlessly, “What would you have done?”
“I dunno,” Finch answered. “I guess it would have been better if I had never been born.”
Poor Jake resented Mr. Roylston’s attitude toward his hero much more than he did the master’s treatment of himself. Once or twice, glancing up from his desk in the schoolroom, Mr. Roylston caught a glance of such concentrated hatred in Finch’s eyes, as actually made him tremble. He attributed it, of course, to the boy’s perverse and willful laziness, and once or twice he returned Finch’s stare in a way, that though the boy dropped his eyes beneath it, seemed to burn into his soul.