“Yes, my boy, I dare say you have full and ample explanations, but I am quite sure they will not impress me. I know that you were but one of many in this fracas, and that it is your misfortune—shall I say?—rather than your fault that your particular missile took unfortunate effect. But we must all suffer at times for our mistakes, perhaps a little unjustly. The moment has struck when you must suffer too. The sooner we get at this business the sooner it will be over.”
“Very good, sir,” said Kit, and silently removed his coat. And then the Doctor took a familiar implement of stout old hickory from a corner, and swished him soundly. Those were the happy days when debts against school discipline were so quickly and effectively liquidated.
Kit bore no grudge to the Doctor, and comparatively little to Mr. Roylston. “It was worth it,” he confessed to Jimmie and Tony afterwards, “and I rather think this lets me out, conscientiously lets me out, you know, from paying attention to his futile announcement of bounds.”
It goes without saying that the Doctor’s prohibition against Lovel’s Woods was about as unpopular a rule as had ever been promulgated. Combined with the fact that the Third Form were bounded for a month, as a consequence of their trouble with Mr. Roylston, the Lower School began the term in a bad mood. The Third Formers were particularly disgruntled with the prefects, who had assumed the responsibility of keeping Lovel’s Woods in order. It appeared that smoking had been indulged in the year before quite extensively by some of the younger boys, and gambling was suspected on the part of a few of the older ones. The Doctor’s rule had been more in the nature of a preventive than a punishment.
But the effort to keep the rule effective was more of an undertaking than the prefects had realized; for they felt themselves required practically to police the forbidden district, a task, the novelty of which soon wore off. With the older boys caves were not particularly popular. Chapin and Marsh started one together, and moved into it the paraphernalia that they had hitherto kept stored in the cave on the beach by Beaver Creek. All of the prefects, acting on Maclaren’s advice, gave up their caves in order to set an example; with the result that there were hardly more than a dozen in official operation.
For the first few weeks of the term the prefects were so zealous in their police duties that few boys cared to run the risk of “skipping” to the Woods. Even our three friends, despite their firm resolution to evade the rule, for the time being felt it the part of wisdom to lie low. Accordingly they avoided the Woods as if it were plague stricken and industriously played hockey every afternoon on Deal Great Pond, which was fully two miles away. But toward the end of January a thaw set in, the skating was spoiled, a heavy snow came, and their usual sports were interrupted; consequently the temptation to visit the cave sub rosa grew stronger than ever. Gradually also the inclement weather dampened the ardor of the prefects and they began to relax their vigilance over the forbidden territory. And we may say in passing that Tony and Jimmie and Kit spent several delightful afternoons in their hiding-place, and the parts of one or two wildly thrilling nights after lights.
Despite his nefarious proceedings in contravention of the rules, be it said to his credit, Tony was making good his resolution of “poling” at his books, and felt confident of taking a good stand in the school when the ranks were read at the beginning of February. The football game, so far as his part in it was concerned, as Morris had predicted, seemed forgotten. He avoided Chapin as much as he could, and when they inevitably met he treated him with a courteous indifference which the older boy doubtless understood and was thankful to accept.
Carroll, after a vacation spent in New York where he had seen all of the plays and dined at the best restaurants and gone to many more dances than were good for his health, returned to the school more than ever dissatisfied and disgruntled with the life he led in it. The talk with Mr. Morris about Tony, the consciousness that they possessed an important secret in common, served a little to make his relations with his house master easier, but he was still unable to give his friendship in the easy way he longed to give it. Neither, to his deepening chagrin and regret, was he making progress in his friendship with Deering, for Tony was more than ever absorbed in the life of his form, and spent all his free time with Wilson and Lawrence. He seemed unconscious of the affection he had won from Carroll and this, with Carroll’s intense consciousness of how completely his affection was going out, served to make their relations anything but free and spontaneous. So far as Tony thought about his room-mate that term it was as of an older fellow with whom he was not very congenial, and of whose laziness and indifferent attitude toward the school he did not approve. He thought Carroll to be wasting his time both at his books and in the school life, in either of which he could have counted immensely. Had Tony been less absorbed in his younger friends, he would probably have found a good deal in Reggie to like and value, as earlier in the year he had begun to feel he should.
From his cozy den in the midst of Standerland Hall, surrounded by his well-loved books, his few but carefully chosen pictures, Mr. Morris watched the life throbbing about him with sympathetic insight and keen interest. He was not one of those fortunate schoolmasters who do not allow their profession to engage their affections. Morris, with a surrender that was effectually a sacrifice, for he had gifts and opportunities that might have won him a finer place in the world, gave his life completely to the school. He had loved it as a boy, he had looked back upon it during college with fond recollection and yearning, and after three years or so at a professional school, having taken his examinations for the bar, he had gone back to accept Dr. Forester’s offer of a mastership. For half-a-dozen years he had been there now, and each year the place and the boys got a deeper hold upon his heart and his interest. He was scrupulously fair and evenly kind; therefore deservedly popular; but despite this he had his favorite boys, not usually known as such by the school at large, to whom he gave a special affection and a deeper interest. From the first day, when Deering, with his sparkling eyes and bright, clear-cut, eager face, had come to him for a seat in the schoolroom, he had felt for him that keen attraction which, as he grew to know the boy’s high spirits, lively sense of honor, and sunshiny nature, had deepened to a real affection. In Carroll also he had always felt a special interest, and had been glad when Tony was put to room with him. He saw Reggie’s growing devotion to Deering, and was sorry that Tony did not respond to a greater extent. Morris felt that Carroll needed the strengthening influence of a strong unselfish friendship with the right sort of boy to help make a man of him. Occasionally Morris had the two boys with others in his rooms for tea or on Saturday nights for a rarebit and a bit of supper, but otherwise occasions did not present themselves for his getting to know them better. He was sorry for this, but saw no very satisfactory way of making them. By the end of January it seemed to him that Reggie was in quite the worst attitude that he had ever been, thoroughly indifferent to the work and life of the school.