Poor Tony was a little chilled by his reception, and he flung himself somewhat petulantly out of the study and into his bedroom. He turned on the light, undressed quickly, and got into bed. For a long time he lay thinking; first of Carroll, the elegant, languid, supercilious Carroll, and rebelled with passionate inner protest at his fate in being cast to room with him. Why had it not been Jimmie Lawrence—clever, handsome, jolly Jimmie, of the sparkling eyes, and the good-natured banter? or the likable self-important Kit, or any one of a dozen or more good fellows he had run against that day? But the memories of them appeased him. He felt himself lucky to have hit it off so well with such as they; and certainly there was much about the school that he was going to like; and it was fine to have a room to himself, a privilege that he had learned was exceptionable with Third formers and was supposed to be due to a “pull” his people had with the Doctor; and it was good luck to be under such a master as Bill Morris, whom he had already decided was to be his favorite. What a horrible fate it would have been to have sat next at table or roomed in the house of Mr. Roylston—“Gumshoe Ebenezer,” as the boys called him! or to have had to submit to Mr. Gray’s sarcasm too often! All things considered, he felt he was very lucky; and so he stifled a queer feeling of loneliness and homesickness, and turned over and tried to go to sleep.
He had heard Carroll moving about for awhile, and then, as he thought at half-past nine, he had heard the click of the electric light as it was turned off, the closing of a study door, and he supposed that Carroll had also gone to bed.
It was perhaps an hour later that he heard a soft tapping, repeated once or twice; then presently a movement in the study, and the creaking of a door being opened and closed; then the sound of whispering in the room without. Tony sat up in bed, wide awake now, and listened intently. In a moment his bedroom door opened. “Who’s that?” he called.
“Shish! be still! don’t make a sound, or I’ll break your head.” Somebody fumbled with the switch, turned the current on, and in a second the bedroom was flooded with light. Four boys, dressed in crimson and white jersies and old trousers, with red caps pulled down over their eyes, crowded into the room.
“What’s the matter?” cried Tony in a whisper, springing out of bed.
“Excellent pupil!” drawled Carroll, at this moment thrusting his head through the doorway, “even in the moment of excitement he preserves the Socratic method.”
“What do you want?” Tony repeated, backing up against his wall, a pathetic but sturdy figure in his white pajamas.
“Get into your clothes, and come along,” said a big fellow, with the air, real or assumed, of a bully.
“Where?”