“Ha, heroic action yesterday. Wounds of honor, eh?”
He made this sarcastic remark, I suppose, in revenge for the knock he received on his head from me at the farewell dinner.
“Cut out nonsense; you get back there and suck your old drawing brushes!” Then he answered “that was going some,” and enquired if it pained much?
“Pain or no pain, this is my face. That’s none of your business,” I snapped back in a furious temper. Then Clown took his seat on the other side, and still keeping his eye on me, whispered and laughed with the teacher of history next to him.
Then came Porcupine. His nose had swollen and was purple,—it was a tempting object for a surgeon’s knife. His face showed far worse (is it my conceit that make this comparison?) than mine. I and Porcupine are chums with desks next to each other, and moreover, as ill-luck would have it, the desks are placed right facing the door. Thus were two strange faces placed together. The other fellows, when in want of something to divert them, would gaze our way with regularity. They say “too bad,” but they are surely laughing in their minds as “ha, these fools!” If that is not so, there is no reason for their whispering together and grinning like that. In the class room, the boys clapped their hands when I entered; two or three of them banzaied. I could not tell whether it was an enthusiastic approval or open insult. While I and Porcupine were thus being made the cynosures of the whole school, Red Shirt came to me as usual.
“Too bad, my friend; I am very sorry indeed for you gentlemen,” he said in a semi-apologetic manner. “I’ve talked with the principal in regard to the story in the paper, and have arranged to demand that the paper retract the report, so you needn’t worry on that score. You were plunged into the trouble because my brother invited Mr. Hotta, and I don’t know how I can apologize you. I’m going to do my level best in this matter; you gentlemen please depend on that.” At the third hour recess the principal came out of his room, and seemed more or less perturbed, saying, “The paper made a bad mess of it, didn’t it? I hope the matter will not become serious.”
As to anxiety, I have none. If they propose to relieve me, I intend to tender my resignation before I get fired,—that’s all. However, if I resign with no fault on my part, I would be simply giving the paper advantage. I thought it proper to make the paper take back what it had said, and stick to my position. I was going to the newspaper office to give them a piece of my mind on my way back but having been told that the school had already taken steps to have the story retracted, I did not.
Porcupine and I saw the principal and Red Shirt at a convenient hour, giving them a faithful version of the incident. The principal and Red Shirt agreed that the incident must have been as we said and that the paper bore some grudge against the school and purposely published such a story. Red Shirt made a round of personal visits on each teacher in the room, defending and explaining our action in the affair. Particularly he dwelt upon the fact that his brother invited Porcupine and it was his fault. All teachers denounced the paper as infamous and agreed that we two deserved sympathy.
On our way home, Porcupine warned me that Red Shirt smelt suspicious, and we would be done unless we looked out. I said he had been smelling some anyway,—it was not necessarily so just from to-day. Then he said that it was his trick to have us invited and mixed in the fight yesterday,—“Aren’t you on to that yet?” Well, I was not. Porcupine was quite a Grobian but he was endowed, I was impressed, with a better brain than I.
“He made us mix into the trouble, and slipped behind and contrived to have the paper publish the story. What a devil!”