“You stop wondering and go to bed,” he said kindly.
[CHAPTER XXV]
ON PROBATION
On Friday morning Alfred Loring awoke early. During the last few days he had got into the habit of waking early and going to sleep late. It was all well enough for Colton and Capes and Hill and the others to counsel cheerfulness; they could afford to be philosophical and to give advice; but when a fellow has been working hard all Fall with one goal in sight only at the last moment to have that goal suddenly disappear, it requires a whole lot of fortitude to keep from cutting up rough. Loring had tried not to act the baby, but just the same the tears had come once, at least. He wished that Colton and the others would cut out their everlasting “Cheer up, Alf!” He couldn’t cheer up, and didn’t want to, anyway! There was one good thing about Tom Dyer; Tom didn’t tell him to cheer up or pretend that the bottom hadn’t dropped out of things; Tom was frankly heart-broken and angry, and it was a comfort to Loring to hear him hold forth.
For the first couple of days Loring had been hopeful. It seemed that the fellow who had perpetrated such a trick, whether for spite or merely as a joke, must have the decency to come forward and own up. But when Thursday night had arrived, and his shackles had not been knocked off, Loring had lost hope. And he had laid awake until long after midnight, thinking and thinking! If only he could get his hands on the fellow who had done it! He groaned and gritted his teeth in impotent rage. Then his anger swung around to the Doctor and the Faculty as a whole. They should have believed his declaration of innocence. His record was as good as that of any fellow in school. Common sense should tell them that he wouldn’t be idiot enough to do a trick like that less than a week before the Broadwood game and so endanger his chance of playing! Fools, that’s what they were! A pack of silly, doddering fools! Finally sleep had come to him, a sleep interspersed with dreams, and now he was awake again with the cold light of a cloudy morning flooding in under the half-raised window-shade. He was tired, unrefreshed; too fagged to feel even resentment. He simply didn’t care this morning.
He turned over, closed his eyes and tried to go to sleep again. Presently a swishing sound from outside the window reached him and, half asleep, he told himself that it was the maid scrubbing the front steps. For Loring’s home was in Philadelphia, where the cleaning of the white marble doorsteps with scrubbing-brush and fine sand or rotten-stone was an almost daily ceremony. But after a few minutes he found himself wide awake again and realized that he was not in his room at home and that consequently his explanation of the sound couldn’t be the correct one. He heard footsteps on the brick pavement and the grating of a pail. But whatever it was it didn’t interest him for long. He looked at the clock on the mantel, saw that it announced a few minutes before seven and decided to get up. Dyer was still snoring peacefully.
Loring bathed and dressed himself slowly. When he was ready he awoke Dyer. By this time the dormitory was noisy with the tramp of hurrying feet and the slamming of doors. Dyer, only half awake, thrust his feet into a pair of heelless slippers, tied a big bath towel about him and went yawning off down the corridor for his shower. Loring took up a magazine irresolutely, turned a few pages, dropped it onto the table again and went out. At the entrance he paused and looked about. The sky hinted of snow and the air smelt of it. The Yard was deserted, or so it seemed until sounds near at hand caused him to turn his head. Then Loring stared in mystification.
A few steps away Dan Vinton, with pail and brush and sandsoap, was scrubbing at the blue letters along the base of the building. He wore a brown sweater in lieu of coat, his trousers were turned up well at the bottoms and his feet were encased in a pair of old “sneakers.” And he was working steadily, doggedly, with set, determined face.