[CHAPTER XVI]
AND LOWERS IT
What a commotion there was the next day!
Wayne and Don found the flag pole surrounded by a throng of delighted and amazed youths when they wandered unostentatiously to the front of the Academy Building on their way to chapel. What a chattering there was! Juniors hinted proudly that they knew more about it than they were inclined to impart, and that when it came to pure and artistic pranks their class “was really the only one, you know!” The lower middle fellows accepted the presence of the fluttering white banner with its derisive and unlovely emblem as a direct challenge from the juniors, and there was much talk of “punched heads.” The upper middle fellows asserted positively that it was the work of a certain secret society which, despite the rules, had to their knowledge been flourishing at Hillton for many years. The seniors—well, the seniors acted like all seniors. They viewed the flag with secret gusto and outward disgust and talked about “disgrace to the school” and “finding the fellows that did it, by Jove!” And Wayne and Don and Paddy and Dave, loud in expressions of surprise and condemnation, mingled with the throng and laughed in their sleeves.
Then every one ran for chapel and listened impatiently for the faculty’s expression of its views on the subject. They were not disappointed. When the time for announcements came, the principal disposed of the minor affairs with his usual tranquillity, and then took up the subject of the flag. Wayne and Don, Paddy and Dave, sitting together at the back of the hall, experienced a distinct sense of disappointment. Instead of taking the appearance of the skull and crossbones as a thing demanding censure and threats of expulsion, the principal ridiculed their splendid effort!
“I presume,” he remarked without any evidence of feeling, “that it is the work of some junior. It could scarcely be anything else. The trick is so little and silly that none but a very young and mistaken boy would have thought of it. Whoever put the flag up there arranged matters so that it can not be pulled down. It would be possible for us to have the topmast lowered, but as that would necessitate a large expense we shall not do it. So the flag will, of course, continue to fly there, a very fitting symbol of the school’s idea of humor, until the wind whips it to pieces. It may be that it will bring a certain amount of ridicule on the Academy, and the sight of it may arouse sensations of disgust in the breasts of sensible boys, but there is no help for it. The faculty will take no steps to discover the author or authors of the silly trick, and they will not have the satisfaction of knowing themselves to be offenders against the school authority. They are in no danger of the slightest punishment; I do not even ask them to own up to the affair or offer apologies. The incident is closed so far as the faculty is concerned. It would, however, have been more appropriate had the design on the flag been a donkey’s head; but it’s too late to change it now.”
The four conspirators walked out of chapel in a silence that held them until they parted at the steps of Warren Hall. Then Dave spoke:
“Smart, weren’t we?”
There was no reply, and the four went into breakfast feeling, as Paddy afterward put it, “like excommunicated angels.” Wayne was very silent during the forenoon and only scowled at every effort of his friends to engage him in conversation. The juniors posted a notice immediately after breakfast calling for a meeting in Society House in the evening; and the example was quickly followed by the other three classes. Indignation ran high. The humor had departed from the affair, and the prospect of having the skull and crossbones fly in front of Academy Building during the rest of the school year was most unwelcome. The four perpetrators of the trick felt this as keenly as any.
“It’s got to come down,” said Wayne doggedly, when the four congregated in 15 Bradley after lunch.