Sam’s eyes flashed. There were several things he would have been very glad to do—violent things, some of them. But in the last few months he had learned steadying lessons in the value of self-control. Perhaps it was because he had learned these lessons more thoroughly than had any of his mates that he remained the guiding spirit of the club.
“The first thing to do is to keep our heads. The next is to wait to see just what happens.... Hold on there, Step! Don’t think I’m for lying down and letting everybody trample on us! I’ll fight, and try to fight as hard as any of the rest of you—when the time comes. But I think it hasn’t come yet.”
Step shrugged his shoulders. “Well, if that’s your notion, all right. I don’t believe there’s another fellow in Plainfield who could put it through, but maybe you can.”
“Wait and see,” said Sam very gravely.
The morning session gave plenty of evidence of the spread of the story through the Junior class, and, indeed, through the school. Sam was perfectly conscious of a cooling in the regard in which he was held. At recess the club rallied about him, but other classmates shunned him. It was at recess, too, that the Trojan heard his fate. He came out of the principal’s office, after a five-minute conference, looking as dejected as a boy in physical health could look.
“I get zero on the Latin paper—a clean flunk—to begin with,” he reported. “That’s on a charge of taking a book into the examination. Then I’m laid off, as far as Cicero goes, for the rest of the term. That is on the charge that I tried to squirrel out of the fix and lied about the book.”
“But that’s a half suspension!”
“How’ll you keep up?”
“Where does it leave your standing now?”
“Wouldn’t they give you a chance to defend yourself?”