Uncle Pete.
The news astonished everybody save the Dean, who had already begun to smell a rat. Astonishment gave place to relief or joy, according to the hearer’s degree of intimacy with Pete, and joy gave place to resentment. It is rather annoying to lavish regret over the taking-off of a friend only to discover that the friend has worked a deliberate hoax on you and is still alive to enjoy your confusion. That is why, had Pete put in an appearance at Erskine at that time, he would in all probability have been mobbed.
But Pete didn’t appear, and ultimately resentment gave place to amusement. The general attitude became one of laughing disapproval. After all, Pete was Pete, and even if he had harrowed their feelings considerably at the same time he had supplied interest at a dull season and had worked nobody any harm. This reasoning may have appealed to the faculty as well. At all events, their verdict, when announced, was thought to be amazingly merciful. Peter Burley ’07 was suspended for the balance of the term. As there remained less than four weeks of the term, the penalty would be of short duration.
Allan and Hal were delighted, and even Tommy, after the first day or two of rampant rage, grudgingly acknowledged that he was glad Pete was coming back. This was also after Tommy had written a denial for the Purple of that paper’s announcement of Pete’s death. That denial was very, very simple and brief. There was no mention made of Pete’s many excellent qualities, nor did it express exuberant joy over his restoration. It merely stated that the announcement had proved erroneous and that Mr. Peter Burley was visiting relatives in New York city.
When Allan or Hal mentioned that announcement, Tommy went purple in the face and fell to stuttering. Perhaps, as Allan pointed out, it was just as well he stuttered, since what he had to say was really unfit for polite ears. But Tommy’s anger was too intense to last, and by the middle of the month he was able to smile wanly at Pete’s deception. The awarding to him of a two-hundred-dollar scholarship helped, perhaps, to restore his good humor. Hal said the scholarship would come in very handy in paying for the dinner.
Pete wrote that he had heard the faculty’s verdict, and was glad they were going to let him come back. He was leaving New York for home as he wrote, to be gone until the opening of the winter term. By reading between the lines, Allan surmised that Pete’s father had not been over-much pleased with his son’s escapade; there were signs of a chastened spirit.
The term wore itself to a close, and one sunshiny morning Allan and Hal and Tommy left Centerport for their respective homes, traveling the first part of the journey in company. Two Spot, apparently indifferent to the separation, was confided to Mrs. Purdy, and spent the Christmas holidays in the neighborhood of the kitchen range.