CHAPTER XX
FINCH’S HOUR
For our friends the incident was closed. Jimmie took his seat in the prefect meetings on Sunday nights and solemnly assisted, with increasing interest, in “running the school,” as the members of those conclaves were accustomed to term their labors. Tony acquiesced in the inevitable with a good grace, and beyond discussing the matter in its various aspects, with Jimmie and to some extent with Mr. Morris, who was handicapped in expressing his opinion by professional loyalty, he kept his mouth shut.
Others did not. Decisions of such a nature, important to the life of a school, are rarely long kept secret. And in this instance, the Head Master did not resent the facts being known, though he himself of course maintained an absolute reserve. The facts were known sooner or later, and with a fair degree of accuracy. And the knowledge increased neither Mr. Roylston’s popularity nor his peace of mind. Indeed he found himself increasingly unable to extract comfort from the reflection that a deserved punishment had been fearlessly administered or that in being just he was as wise as if he had also been merciful. During that term Mr. Roylston had many bad quarters of an hour.
As for Tony, as Doctor Forester had predicted, the loss of the Head Prefectship added to rather than diminished from his strength among his schoolmates. He became, quite naturally and spontaneously, the unofficial adviser of the prefect body, and particularly of Clavering, who made a point of consulting him upon all important matters that came to the prefects’ notice. The effect of this generosity on Clavering’s part was to reveal the two boys to each other and to establish a firm friendship between them.
Clavering was a heavy, solid, serious-minded boy, of a mighty frame and muscle, but slow, patient and cautious in his thought and emotions. Until Tony had become fairly intimate with him, he had never appreciated his classmate’s deep and earnest character; just as Clavering, until he got behind Tony’s light-hearted genial pleasantness of manner and speech, had not realized that there was anything there worth while,—any seriousness of purpose, soundness of feeling, or loyalty to principle. He had taken Tony superficially, and was surprised in the course of the term to find how much he had grown to like him; how much, too, he was depending on Tony’s judgment and feeling in the various matters with which the Head Prefect in a large school may have to deal.
“I’m slow; you’re quick,” he said to Tony one night. “I’m fairly sure, I suppose, when I make up my mind,—but it takes me the deuce of a long time to see things straight. You seem to see into a situation, to know a fellow, right off.”