“Now then,” said the Fifth-form boy, turning again to Culver, “shake hands with Richardson and make it up. You’ve been licked, so there’s nothing left to settle.”
Culver may have secretly differed from Birket on this point, but he kept his secret to himself and held out his hand. Dick took it, and gave it an honest shake. It is one of the luxuries victors enjoy, to shake the proffered hand of the vanquished, and Dick enjoyed it greatly.
“It’s all made up now,” said Birket, addressing the Den, “and there’d better be no more row about it, or you’ll have one of the Sixth down on you, and he won’t let you off as easy as I have, I can tell you.”
But although the fight was over, and the breach of the peace was healed, the consequences of the fray were of much longer duration.
Their effect on Dick was not, on the whole, beneficial to that doughty young warrior. Prosperity went harder with him than adversity. As long as he had his hill to climb, his foe to vanquish, his peril to brave, Dick had the makings of a hero. But when fortune smoothed his path, when the foe lay at his feet, when the peril had passed behind, then Dick’s troubles began. Popularity turned his head, and laid him open to dangers twice as bad as those he had cleared. The more fellows cheered him, the more he craved their cheers; the more he craved their cheers, the more willing a slave he became.
“It strikes me, youngster,” said Cresswell one day, when the term had turned the corner, and the Grandcourt match was beginning to loom very near in the future, “it strikes me you’re not doing much good up here. You’re always fooling about with those precious juniors of yours, instead of sticking to cricket and tennis and your books. Here’s young Aspinall here, ahead of you, by long chalks, in classics, and getting a break on at tennis that’ll puzzle you to pick up unless you wake up. You can do as you like; only don’t blame me if you get stuck among the louts.”
For a time, this friendly advice pulled Dick up in his profitless career. The dread of being considered a “lout” by your senior is a motive which appeals forcibly to most boys; and for a week or so Dick made a feverish show of returning to his outdoor sports, and doing himself justice.
But the effort died away under the claims of the Den. Den suppers, Den concerts, Den debates, and Den conclaves always somehow managed to clash with Templeton work and play; and even Heathcote found it next to impossible to keep up his batting and his secretarial duties to the honourable fraternity.
“I shall have to jack it up,” said he, one day, dolefully to Dick, “Pledge always wants me just when things are going on here. Hadn’t you better get some one else?”
“Bosh! Let Pledge get some one else,” said Dick, warmly. “What right has he got to make you fag for him out of school; that’s the very thing we want to stop.”