“I will,” thought Gerald. “And I’ll ask him right now.”
He found the Assistant Principal in his study in Clarke.
“Mr. Collins,” he began, breathlessly, having run most of the way up the hill, “when you’re on probation, sir, can you take exercise?”
Mr. Collins looked startled. Then he smiled broadly.
“Why, I should hope so, Pennimore,” he laughed. “And from your appearance I’d say you’d been taking it.”
“But I mean—I mean real exercise, Mr. Collins,” explained Gerald.
“Ah!” Mr. Collins slipped a paper-knife between the pages of the magazine he held and leaned comfortably back in his deep leather chair. This was his hour of leisure, and he might well have displayed impatience at the interruption. Instead, however, he seemed amused and inclined toward conversation. “Now what do you call ‘real’ exercise, Pennimore? Perhaps wood-chopping; that was Mr. Gladstone’s favorite form of relaxation from brain-work, and I believe Mr. Roosevelt likes to swing an ax on occasions. That isn’t—ah—an ax you are concealing behind you, Pennimore?”
“No, sir.” Gerald showed the article to be a gray woolen cap. “What I meant was exercise like—like running and such things, Mr. Collins.”
“Running?” Mr. Collins looked thoughtful. “Let me see, my boy; you were running with the track squad, were you not?”