“Why, no, sir—I don’t—not altogether, that is. Poor Jake was in a bad way; things had been getting pretty hard for him for one reason or another, and he was making them still harder for himself. I did hear that you caught him cheating in your Latin examination, and I just supposed that that was the last straw. He’s always been rather friendly with me, but he was so vicious that night down by the pond, refusing altogether to tell me why he was cutting out, that I thought him a little out of his head. But I supposed the cheating was really responsible.”
“Well,” rejoined Mr. Roylston, after a moment’s reflection, “as a matter of fact I was altogether mistaken about his cheating in that particular examination. I believe what he afterwards told me, that he had not cheated at all; though, as he also acknowledged he had cheated so often before that I can hardly blame myself for suspecting him.”
“Yes, I know,” said Tony; “I am afraid poor Jake lost all hold of himself. He was not naturally a cheat or a story-teller, but—but—well, I try to think he wasn’t altogether responsible.”
“Perhaps not—that night in my room, at all events, he quite lost control of himself as a result of my accusation, and he told me in a very bitter language that my attitude toward him had been one of the chief causes of his unhappiness here at Deal.”
Tony scarcely knew what to say to this, for of course he remembered how bitterly Finch had always hated Mr. Roylston. The master, however, did not expect a reply. “I think,” he went on, “that there was a good deal of justice in what the boy said, though I did not mean to go into that with you to-night. Among other things he told me that night that he intensely resented my attitude toward you.”
Tony laughed a little. “Jake showed equally bad judgment whether he greatly liked or disliked a person.”
“Well,” continued Mr. Roylston, “right or wrong, his remarks have caused me to think things over very seriously the last few days, and I have come to the conclusion that in this also Finch was right. I was hard on you—too hard.”
Tony lay still for a moment, thinking; finally he raised himself a little and looked at the master intently. “Mr. Roylston,” he said, “it’s mighty white of you to come and say this to me. In return I want to tell you just one thing—the one thing I have against you—the rest has been give and take, and none of it, it seems to me, very serious. I know I have annoyed you a great many times and that occasionally in Lower School days I was more or less impertinent, but I did one thing that I was thoroughly ashamed of and thoroughly sorry for. As for your soaking me a lot in the old days, as for your preventing me from being Head Prefect, I’ve borne no grudge. I think you were pretty stiff—I think honestly you are too stiff as to discipline most of the time—but I never thought you were unfair or unjust, and I have but one grudge against you. And that is that when I apologized to you for writing that thing a year ago you wouldn’t accept my apology really; you wouldn’t believe I was sorry.”
“Well, I believe so now,” said Mr. Roylston, “and it is to tell you that particularly that I have come here to-night.”