CHAPTER VII.SCHOOL SPIRIT AND SCHOOL INFLUENCES.
Next morning Frank made the acquaintance of Dr. Hobart, principal of Queen's School. The Doctor had the reputation of being severe, a terror to wrong doers, but gentle enough withal when things went right. He was a mere wisp of a man, about sixty years old, not over five feet tall, and with a thin, narrow face and parchment-like skin. His shoulders were bowed a little, perhaps with his weight of learning, for Dr. Hobart was considered one of the best of preparatory school leaders. Indeed, his reputation went far and wide, and the excellence of his school brought him pupils from many parts of the country.
The Doctor's distinguishing feature was his eyes, or rather eye, for he only had one which nature gave him. His natural left eye had many years before been injured and removed. It was now replaced by one of glass, and the fixed and unwinking position of it when the Doctor was aroused bored straight through the soul of the culprit before him and came out the other side, or so it seemed to the unfortunate who faced him, accused of misdeeds. It would be a brazen youth, indeed, who could stand before that penetrating glance from under the shaggy brows.
Frank had heard a good deal about the Doctor, and it was with some trepidation that he approached the august presence in his quarters on the first floor, third entry of Warren.
"Old Glass-eye is a ring-snorter," Gleason had told him. "They say he dines off freshmen. I'm a brave man, but I was glad when he was through with me. I was so flim-fazzled when he turned that glass orb of his on me that I couldn't have told whether the amateur hundred-yard record had set at ten seconds or half an hour."
But the Doctor was in one of his most amiable moods when Frank was ushered into his presence.
"This is the late-comer, is it?" he inquired, gently.
Frank interpreted it as a criticism, and hurried to say: