“Which he’s sure to do,” suggested Marsh.
Carroll withered them with a glance. “I rather fancy not,” he drawled. “He’s a southerner and a gentleman.”
“Well, let’s hope not,” interposed Thorndyke.... “There, don’t get huffy, Harry, you can’t help coming from Chicago.”
“Who wants to help it, you big cow?” cried Marsh, giving his chum Thorndyke a good-natured push against the wall. “But if I thought, as Carroll does, that there were not any gentlemen north of Mason and Dixon’s line, I wouldn’t come to a northern school.”
“Rot!” vouchsafed Carroll. “Let’s whoop her up for Gumshoe, and avoid any daffy questions about being quizzled by the Head.”
********
Tony found it difficult the next day not to take Jimmie Lawrence or Kit Wilson into his confidence, and tell them of his adventure of the night before. But he conquered the temptation, for he was singularly incapable of enjoying himself at the expense of any one’s else discomfiture. Tony was not without his faults, as we shall see, but he genuinely disliked to make other people uncomfortable. Perhaps this was an inheritance from a long line of ancestors who had had rather nice ideas about what constitutes a gentleman. At any rate, he was born that way, and did not deserve any special credit for it. He realized that if he told his story he might easily make his three captors the butts of the school, but that was not a form of revenge that appealed to him. Accordingly he held his peace, and if it had depended on him the story never would have been told. But we may say in passing, that eventually Carroll told the tale himself: it entered into the body of Deal tradition, and is frequently told by old Deal boys when hazing is a subject of conversation.
Tony felt almost familiar with the schoolroom as he entered after prayers the next morning. A score of faces were now known to him, and so many had seemed friendly as he looked into them, that the homesick feeling and the alarm of the night before rapidly passed away. Occasionally he noticed Mr. Morris’s glance resting upon him, as he sat at his books during the day, in a particularly interested and friendly way. There was something in Morris’s face—an attractiveness, perhaps one would call it, for he was not precisely handsome—a winningness in the directness of his glance, that more than once had won boys at almost first sight. Morris had the genius of inspiring enthusiasms, and he was to inspire one in Tony. The master was soon to hear from Carroll the inwardness of Tony’s exploits, and marvel with him at the boy’s “whiteness” in not talking. Mr. Morris was the occasional recipient of the intimate confidences of the supercilious Virginian, for even Carroll had moments of weakness when he felt the need of unburdening himself and receiving sympathy—moments, as he would have said, when he was not himself.
As the day wore on Tony was inclined to forget his unpleasant adventure of the night before. The afternoon found him again on the football field, absorbed in learning the game, and winning encomiums in the eyes of Kit, who until Thanksgiving would have few thoughts aside from football. Kit was captain of his form eleven, and his interest in its success was equaled only by the readiness with which he would sacrifice his best players to the school team or even to the scrub if they were needed. He was delighted with Deering’s advent, as he had felt he was weak in ends, and Tony’s fleetness promised much in that direction.
The likelihood of his securing a position on his form team gave Deering a prestige that stood him in good stead as a new boy; and as he was lively, good-natured and appreciative, it seemed that on the whole he would have an agreeable time.