Skippy sat down and glared at the Roman.
Some day, some day he would even institute a fund for superannuated teachers, he would! He would come back some day to the school he had made the greatest in the country; he would come as the benefactor and then the Roman, old, and decrepit in a wheeled chair, would be brought to him, to him, John C. Bedelle, whom as a boy he had held up to the ridicule of the class! What a revenge that would be, the proud and haughty Roman, the greatest flunker of them all, the Roman of the caustic tongue and the all-seeing eye, actually clinging to his hand, stammering out his thanks . . . the Roman whose mocking voice still echoed in his memory, "Don't dream, John, don't do it!"
CHAPTER XV
The Tennessee Shad Suspects
THE Tennessee Shad, as has been told, was long, thin and full of bones. His imagination was chiefly occupied in initiating ideas which would be the cause of exertion in others. In the warmth of the budding season he came out of his winter cage and could be seen for long hours perched on his window sill in the Kennedy, legs pendent; like some dreamy vulture, surveying the horizon for a significant point.
There was little that escaped the Shad. For some time his curiosity had been stirred by the unusual attentions paid to Skippy Bedelle by his old side-partner, Doc Macnooder. Doc was eminently practical and if Doc devoted any part of his time to an inconsequential underformer, in the language of the day, there was something doing.
The early visits of Macnooder to Skippy's room at the time of the Foot Regulator campaign had been noted, likewise the subsequent cooling of the affection. So when after a few weeks' lapse Macnooder was again seen impelling Skippy in the direction of the Jigger Shop with a protecting arm over his shoulders, the Tennessee Shad whistled softly through his teeth and said to himself: