“We will not go into that, Riddell,” he said. “You must not suppose I and others have not considered the good of Willoughby in this matter. It remains for you to consider it also. As you grow older you will constantly find duties confronting you which may be sorely against your inclination, but which as an honest man you will know are not to be shirked. You have a chance of beginning now. I don’t pretend to say you will find it easy or pleasant work, or that you are likely to succeed, at first at any rate, as well as others have done. But unless I am mistaken you will not give in on that account. Of course you will need to exert yourself. You know what boys look for in a captain; it’s not mere muscle, or agility. Get them by all means if you can; but what will be worth far more than these will be sympathy. If they discover you are one with them, and that in your efforts to keep order you have the welfare of the school chiefly at heart, they will come out, depend upon it, and meet you half-way. It’s worth trying, Riddell.”
Riddell said nothing, but his face was rather more hopeful as he looked up at the doctor.
“Come,” said the latter, “there’s the bell for chapel. It’s time we went in.”
Riddell entered chapel that morning in a strangely conflicting frame of mind. The hope was still in his face, but the misgivings were still in his heart, and the whole prospect before him seemed to be a dream.
As the slight shy boy walked slowly up the floor to his place among the Sixth, the boys on either side eyed him curiously and eagerly, and a half-titter, half-sneer greeted his appearance.
Some regarded him with a disfavour which amounted to positive dislike, others with disdain and even contempt, and others thought of Wyndham and wondered what Willoughby was coming to. Even among the Sixth many an unfriendly glance was darted at him as he took his seat, and many a whispered foreboding passed from boy to boy. Only a few watched him with looks of sympathy, and of these scarcely one was hopeful.
Happily for Riddell, he could not see half of all this; and when in a moment the doctor entered and prayers began, he saw none of it. For he was one of a few at Willoughby to whom this early-morning service was something more than a mere routine, and who felt, especially at times like this, that in those beautiful familiar words was to be found the best of all preparations for the day’s duties.
Telson, as he stood down by the door, with his hands in his pockets, beside his friend Parson, was void of all such reflections. What was chiefly occupying his lordly mind at that moment was the discovery suddenly made, that if Riddell was the new captain, he of course would be captain’s fag. And he was not quite sure whether to be pleased or the reverse at his new dignity.
“You see,” said he to his ally, in a whisper, “it’s good larks marking the fellows off every morning as they come into chapel, but then, don’t you twig that means I’ve got to be here the moment the bell begins ringing? and that’s no joke.”
“No, unless you got leave to ring the bell, too,” said Parson. “Then of course they couldn’t troop in till you were there. I’d come down and help with the bell, you know.”