With the limp of a martyr, he turned his back on Mr. Dater, and returned to his seat, where he sat in injured dignity, disdaining to notice the grimaces of his companions.
Class over, the master summoned Hicks, and bent his brows, boring him with a look of inquisitorial accusation.
"Hicks," he said, spacing his words, "I have felt, for the last two weeks, a certain lack of discipline here. Just a word to the wise, Hicks, just a word to the wise!"
Hickey was pained. Where was the evidence to warrant such a flat accusation? He had been arraigned on suspicion, that was all, absolutely on mere haphazard suspicion. And this was justice?
Moreover, Hickey's sensitive nature was shocked. He had always looked upon Pa Dater as an antagonist for whose sense of fair play he would have answered as for his own. And now to be accused thus with innuendo and veiled menace—then he could have faith in no master, not one in the whole faculty! And this grieved Hickey mightily as he went moodily along the halls.
Now, the code of a schoolboy's ethics is a marvellously fashioned thing—and by that each master stands or falls. To be accused of an offence of which he is innocent means nothing, for it simply demonstrates the lower calibre of the master's intelligence. But to be suspected and accused on mere suspicion of something which he has just committed,—that is unpardonable, and in absolute violation of the laws of warfare, which decree that the struggle shall be one of wits, without recourse to the methods of the inquisition.
Hickey, disillusionised and shocked, went glumly down the brownstone steps of Memorial and slowly about the green circle, resisting the shouted invitations to tarry under the nourishing apple trees.
He felt in him an imperative need to strike back, to instantly break some rule of the tyranny that encompassed him. With this heroic intention he walked nonchalantly up the main street to the jigger-shop, which no underformer may enter until after four. As he approached the forbidden haunt, suddenly the figure of Mr. Lorenzo Blackstone Tapping, the young assistant housemaster at the Dickinson, more popularly known as "Tabby," rolled up on a bicycle.
"Humph, Hicks!" said at once Mr. Tapping with a suspicious glance at the jigger-shop directly opposite, "how do you happen to be here out of hours?"
"Please, sir," said Hickey glibly, "I've got a nail that's sticking into my foot. I was just going to Bill Orum's to get it fixed."