“Well, in other words, you may consider yourself as under test. And the test will be the extent to which you have profited by what has taken place.”
“Oh!” said Sam. “Then you’re waiting to see if I’ve really learned the lesson?”
“You have the idea.”
Sam knit his brows. “It’s awfully kind of you, Father—it’s greater mercy than I’d hoped for. I—I’ll try my prettiest to deserve it. And—and will everything go on just as—just as before?”
“As nearly as may be. Only that brings me to my second point. It has to do with St. Mark’s.”
“Oh!” said Sam again, a bit apprehensively, it must be admitted.
“I think,” said his father slowly, “that for the present we’ll hold in abeyance any plans for sending you away to school. Don’t regard this as a punishment; it is merely part of the probation. St. Mark’s, as you know, allows its students much liberty. It treats them almost as if they were men. And, frankly, Sam, it remains for you to prove that you deserve such confidence. As the boys say, it’s up to you.”
The blow to the boy’s hopes was harder than his father realized. For months Sam had been counting upon an early transfer to the famous preparatory school. At his books, and in sports, he had striven with an eye to the St. Mark’s standards; he had read everything concerning the academy upon which he could lay hands; he had thought of St. Mark’s by day and dreamed of it at night. And now, of a sudden, he learned that his goal was not near, but at a distance which seemed to be all the more unhappy because of its vagueness. Yet, very pluckily, he rallied from the shock.
“Yes, sir; it’s up to me—I understand,” said he. “I’ve got to show that I’m not an utter idiot, that I have some common sense. And I will show it, I will! If I don’t, I won’t be worth sending to St. Mark’s or—or anywhere else!”