“What I’ve got to tell you, Sam Parker. It’s about last night—and almost all through the night. Poor Little Perrine was out of his head, raving. He seemed to be going over and over it, and then beginning again and going all through it.”
“That is, through the accident?”
Jennie’s eyes flashed. “Accident! You know well enough it was something else. Oh, well, perhaps it was partly accident, but it was something else, too. Don’t stop me! I don’t call it all accident when the poor little fellow was just driven out upon the thin ice! And while he was delirious he kept crying out, ‘Don’t let him get me! Stop him! Don’t let Tom Orkney get me!’ Why, we could hear him over at our house. It was awful!”
“Gee, but it must have been tough!” cried Step.
“Tough!” For a moment Jennie regarded Master Jones half pityingly. “Mercy! but you boys have weak ways of putting things! If you’d heard him shrieking——”
“Hold on!” the Trojan broke in excitedly. “Here comes Orkney!”
There may have been method in the circumstance that Orkney was reaching the school grounds but a few minutes before the opening hour. Perhaps he had hoped that most of his mates would be within the building when he arrived, but he did not falter when his glance fell upon the crowd. Of its temper he could have had little doubt, though probably he had not foreseen the hostility of the reception which awaited him.
Three or four senior girls near the gate deliberately turned their backs to him. As many senior boys looked him full in the face with no sign of recognition.
Orkney squared his shoulders, and raised his head. Looking straight before him, he walked up the path. No one addressed him, and he spoke to nobody till he came to Sam.
“Parker!” Tom’s voice was low and not quite steady.