More Bed-Time Stories

by Louise Chandler Moulton

"Fool if he wouldn't," was the reply, "after the way we fellows have all treated him, too."

All day Hal was in hourly expectation of being sent for to an interview solemn and awful in the president's room. But the hours went on and no summons came. About four o'clock he saw Max Grenoble go into the dreaded chamber of audience. Now, he thought, all would come out. Of course Max had gone to tell all he knew. Would he be suspended, or expelled, he wondered, or would the Prex be satisfied with giving him black marks enough to put the leadership altogether beyond his reach? Then a plan came to him. The president's room was on the lower floor, and over one of its windows grew a grape vine large enough to conceal him from observation. He would go there and listen. That it was a very mean thing to do he knew as well as any body, but temptation was too strong for him, and giving one look to make sure that he was not observed he hid himself away under the open window. The first words he heard were in the voice of the president:

"As soon as Vane told me you were out last evening, it occurred to me that you would know who was at the bottom of the affair, and it seems you do."

"Yes, sir," firmly and quietly.

"Then there can be no possible doubt that it is your duty to tell."

"It cannot be my duty, sir, to be a sneak. This secret came into my hands by accident. If I had been monitor for the evening, it would, of course, be my duty to make it known. Not having been in any such capacity, I think were I to turn telltale I should be no gentleman."

"It's a new order of things when fifty must come to fifteen to be told what it is to be a gentleman," the president said, hotly. "Perhaps you don't know, sir, that if you persist in your resolution you lose all hope of the leadership? You will be considered an accessory in the crime, and you will lose as many credit marks as would be taken from the ringleader were he detected."

"I can afford to lose those better than my own self-respect," Max said, stoutly, and then added, "I think you would have done the same, President King, when you were at my age."

Hal waited to hear no more, but edged cautiously from his place of concealment. He thought he was not above profiting by Max's generosity. He tried to think Max was a fool, but there was an inner voice in his heart which whispered that there was something sublime in such folly, and, try as he might, this inner voice would not altogether be silenced.