“Oh, I could never do it, sir!” exclaimed Riddell, pale at the very notion.
“Try,” said the head master. “It may not be so impossible as you think.”
“I’m not popular, sir,” faltered Riddell, “and I’ve no influence. Indeed, it would only make things worse. Try some one else, sir. Try Fairbairn.”
“I shall want Fairbairn to be the head of the schoolhouse,” said the doctor.
“I’m sure it would be a mistake, sir,” repeated Riddell. “If there was any chance of my succeeding I would try, but—”
“But,” said the doctor, “you have not tried. Listen, Riddell; I know I am not inviting you to a bed of roses. It is a come-down, I know, for the captain of the school and the head of the schoolhouse to go down to Welch’s, especially such a Welch’s as ours is at present. But the post of danger, you know, is the post of honour. I leave it to you. You need not go unless you wish. I shall not think worse of you if you conscientiously feel you should not go. Think it over. Count all the cost. You have already made a position for yourself in the schoolhouse. You will have to quit that, of course, and start afresh and single-handed in the new house, and it is not likely that those who defy the rules of the school will take at first to a fellow who comes to enforce them. Think it all over, I say, and decide with open eyes.”
The doctor’s words had a strange inspiriting effect on this shy and diffident boy. The recital of all the difficulties in the way was the most powerful argument to a nature like his, and when at length the doctor wished him good-night and told him to take till the following day to decide, Riddell was already growing accustomed to the prospect of his new duty.
For all that, the day that ensued was anxious and troubled. Not so much on account of Welch’s. On that point his mind was pretty nearly made up. It seemed a call of duty, and therefore it was a call of honour, which Riddell dare not disobey. But to leave the schoolhouse just now, when it lay under the reproach caused by the boat-race accident; and worse still, to leave it just when young Wyndham seemed to be drifting from his moorings and yielding with less and less effort to the temptations of bad companions—these were troubles compared with which the perils and difficulties of his new task were but light.
For a long time that night Riddell sat in his study and pondered over the doctor’s offer, and looked at it in all its aspects, and counted up all the cost.
Then like a wise man he took counsel of a Friend. Ah! you say, he talked it over with Fairbairn, or Porter, or the acute Crossfield—or, perhaps, he wrote a letter to old Wyndham? No, reader, Riddell had a Friend at Willoughby dearer even than old Wyndham, and nearer than Fairbairn, or Porter, or Crossfield, and that night when all the school was asleep, little dreaming what its captain did, he went to that Friend and told Him all his difficulties about Welch’s, and his anxieties about young Wyndham, and even his unhappiness about the boat-race; and in doing so found himself wonderfully cheered and ready to face the new duty, and even hopeful of success.