“But I—oh, Mr. Harrow, do see if you can't help me to go.” Joel squirmed all over, and even clutched the under-teacher's arm piteously.
“Alas, Joel! it is beyond my power.” Mr. Harrow shook his head. He didn't think it necessary to state that he had already used every argument he could employ to induce Dr. Marks to change his mind. “Some strong pressure must be brought to bear upon Pepper, or he will amount to nothing but an athletic lad. He must see the value of study,” the master had responded, and signified that the interview was ended, and his command was to be carried out.
“Joel,”—Mr. Harrow was speaking—“be a man, and bear this as you can. You've had your chances for study, and not taken them. It is a case of must now. Remember, Dr. Marks is doing this in love to you. He has got to fit you out as well as he can in this school, to take that place in life that your mother wants you to fill. Don't waste a moment on vain regrets, but buckle to your studies now.”
It was a long speech for the under-teacher, and he had a hard time getting through with it. At its end, Joel, half dazed with his misfortune, but with a feeling that as a man, Dr. Marks and Mr. Harrow had treated him, hurried back to his room, dragged his chair up to the table, and pushing off the untidy collection of rackets, tennis balls, boxing gloves, and other implements of his gymnasium work and his recreation hours, lent his whole heart with a new impulse to his task.
Somehow he did not feel like crying, as had often been the case with previous trials. “He said, 'Be a man,'” Joel kept repeating over and over to himself, while the words of his lesson swam before his eyes. “And so I will; and he said, Dr. Marks had got to make me as Mamsie wanted me to be,” repeated Joel to himself, taking a shorter cut with the idea. “And so I will be.” And he leaned his elbows on the table, bent his head over his book, and clutching his stubby crop by both hands and holding on tightly, he was soon lost to his misfortune and the outside world.
“Hullo!” David stood still in amazement at Joel's unusual attitude over his lesson. Then he reflected that he was making up extra work, to be free for the holiday on the morrow. Notwithstanding the need of quiet, David was so full of it that he couldn't refrain from saying jubilantly, “Oh, what a great time we'll have to-morrow, Joe!” giving him a pound on the back.
“I'm not going,” said Joel, without raising his head.
David ran around his chair to look at him from the further side, then peered under the bunch of curls Joel was hanging to.
“What's—what's the matter, Joe?” he gasped, clutching the table.
“Dr. Marks says I'm not to go,” said Joel, telling the whole at once.