“I—I’d rather not, please, sir.”
“You’re certain?”
“Yes, sir. I’d rather not tell.”
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Collins frowned slightly and picked up the card. For a moment or two there was silence while he glanced over the record it held. Then, “Upon my word, Burtis, this is too bad,” he exclaimed annoyedly. “You have good reports for the week from every instructor. Mr. Bendix says you show first-class physical conditions and that you are trying football. Here’s a fine, clean card and now you go and spoil it by such tomfoolery as last night’s! Too bad, really! Well—”
He laid the card down again, drummed on the desk with his fingers once or twice, swung his chair around so that he could look out the window across the Yard and was silent. A minute passed. Kendall followed the Assistant Principal’s gaze with his own and wondered how many pillows were piled in the window seat of a room in Dudley, how you told time by a sun-dial and what the little red discs on the golf course meant. Then Mr. Collins swung around briskly and Kendall came back from his dreaming.
“Well, Burtis,” said Mr. Collins in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice, “I guess it will have to be probation.”
Kendall made no answer. He was very uncertain as to what probation meant. He didn’t like the sound of it, however. It sounded, he thought, almost as bad as Circumstantial Evidence. Mr. Collins didn’t leave him long in ignorance, though:
“That means that you must keep within school bounds, my boy, remain in your room from supper time until chapel in the morning, have your lessons perfect and abstain from athletics.”
“Does it mean,” asked Kendall blankly, “that I mustn’t play football, sir?”