A TOUGH PROBLEM
MELVIN and Varrell returned from their Greek recitation together.
“I don’t like the way things are going this year,” Melvin was saying.
“There’s too much confidence. If the track team wins, it will be just as
expected, with no credit to any one; if we lose, woe to captain and
manager.”
“You’re right,” said Varrell, “but forewarned is forearmed. Keep cool
and reasonable and see to it that you don’t lose.”
“If it weren’t for Dickinson,” went on Melvin, “I shouldn’t have taken
the thing at all. You see, I feel a kind of responsibility toward him
because of the way in which I got him to run last year, so I didn’t like
to refuse him.”
“You know I wasn’t here last year,” said Varrell.
“Why, of course! I keep forgetting that you came this fall. It happened
this way. Martin discovered Dickinson,—you’ve heard of Martin, haven’t
you, of last year’s senior class?”
Varrell nodded.
“Martin discovered that Dickinson could run, and Curtis and I got him
out for the sports in the spring and stood sponsors for him until he had
courage enough to stand alone.”
“Won everything last year, didn’t he?” asked Varrell.
“Quarter and two-twenty, hands down,” answered Melvin; “but there’s no
surety that he’ll do it again. Besides, no one can say yet what the
effect of that ankle will be. The doctor thinks it will be as strong as
ever, but I know a sprained ankle is very easy to sprain again. Without
Dickinson we shouldn’t have much to brag of.”
Both boys turned to their work. Melvin, in the quiet business-like way
with which he had learned to attack his lessons, opened his trigonometry
on the desk and in a moment was oblivious to all else but the problem
which was first to be solved. Varrell’s stint was of a different
kind,—forty lines of “Macbeth” to be committed to memory before twelve
o’clock. As this involved much repetition and possible interference with
the trigonometry problem, he retired to the bedroom, where he could
mutter at his ease.
They possessed two very different personalities. Varrell was tall and
slight, his limbs hardly filled out to their proper roundness, with a
clear-cut, intelligent face and striking gray eyes that were remarkable,
not so much for what they showed of the character behind them, as for
the power of sight which they seemed to possess. Ever alert and
observant, even when his face was otherwise at rest, the eyes seemed the
aggressive part of the boy. Their direct glance was like a ray of
concentrated intelligence.
“I like Varrell,” said Tompkins one day, in a burst of confidence,
“except when he looks at me hard, and then his eyes cut right through
me, and I feel as if he were counting the hairs on the back of my head.”
Melvin was more substantially built. As he sat at the table, the cloth
of his coat sleeves drew tight over the splendid deltoid and biceps, and
his square, blunt knees showed hardened muscles rounding out beyond the
knee-cap. If his face lacked the alertness of look so noticeable in
Varrell, it yet had a composure and an air of self-reliance and honesty
that rendered it no less attractive.
The learner of Shakespeare was restless. The first five lines were
mastered in a chair by the window, the next five on Melvin’s bed, the
third on Poole’s bed, and the fourth on a second chair. In the circuit
of the room he had learned twenty lines.
“Another lap and I shall have it,” he said to himself, gleefully, as he
took his place again by the window.
The outside door opened and Poole came rushing into the study. “I want
to tell you something, Dick, and I’ve just three minutes before Latin to
tell it in—Whose hat is that?”
“Varrell’s,” said Dick, who had risen from the desk. “He’s in the
bedroom plugging away at Shakespeare.”
“Hello, Varrell,” said Phil, looking in at the door. “Shakespeare plays
havoc with the beds, doesn’t he?”
“Get out!” cried Varrell, waving him off; “you rattle me.”
Phil joined Dick on the other side of the room. Through the open door
they could see the Shakespearean scholar doggedly muttering over his
book.
“Shan’t we disturb him?” asked Phil, hesitating.
“Speak low and there’ll be no danger,” said Melvin. “His ears aren’t
quick.”
The eleven o’clock bell soon broke in on the conversation, and sent the
younger boy flying to his recitation. Dick sat down at the desk again
and tried to take up his work where he had left it, but he was
apparently in a very unstudious mood. His pencil no longer moved
steadily over the paper; his gaze rested fitfully now here, now there,
on the various objects before him; his flushed sober face showed that
his thoughts were hot within him. Finally, he threw down his pencil in
disgust, and sauntering over to the window, leaned his head against the
sash and gazed moodily out.
“He’s a confounded rascal!” exclaimed Varrell, who had been eying his
agitated comrade over the Shakespeare, “but it’s no fault of yours, and
why do you bother yourself about him?”
“Who?” said Dick, staring at him in amazement.
“Why, Bosworth, of course,” went on Varrell, coolly; “if what Phil says
of him is true, he’s even a bigger rascal than I always thought him.”
Dick was nonplussed. His conversation with Phil had certainly been
carried on in a tone too low to be audible to Varrell in the bedroom.
“What do you mean?” he asked sharply.
“Why, that he has been getting some of those little fellows into his
room to play poker and fleecing them, especially that boy with a short
name with a ‘t’ or a ‘d’ in it.”
“Yes, Eddy,” replied Dick. “He’s in Phil’s class.” And then, looking
curiously at his friend, he added, “Your hearing is growing surprisingly
good, I must say.”
“I’m sorry if I overheard what you meant I should not know,” said
Varrell, flushing. “If that is the case, I shall certainly try to forget
it.”
“Oh, I don’t mind your knowing it,” said Dick, “I only wish you could
tell what we ought to do about it.”
The clanging bell again interposed its peremptory summons.
“Twelve o’clock!” cried Varrell, as he made a dash for his hat, “and
only thirty lines. I’ll bet I’ll be called on for the ten I didn’t
learn.”
When Phil had time for longer explanations, he gave Dick more details of
the happenings in Sibley 15, Bosworth’s room. Eddy, who had given the
information, was in Phil’s class, and of about Phil’s age. Smarting
under a sense of ill-treatment and desperately perplexed as to how he
was to account for the lost money, which had been sent him for purchases
for the winter, he had opened his heart to Phil, who in turn had made
haste to unburden himself to his older and presumably wiser room-mate.
Hardly had he done this, when Eddy repented of his confidences and
tearfully besought his classmate never to speak of it to a living soul.
But the murder was out, and the best Phil could do was to urge Melvin to
guard the secret.
“So, having stolen the fellow’s money, Bosworth has made him promise not
to mention the fact,” said Melvin.
“Eddy said it was a matter of honor. The money had been lost in fair
play, and he had no right to speak of it when it might get them all into
trouble.”
“So Bosworth says, I suppose,” said Melvin.
“Yes, that’s it; Bosworth says it’s just a personal matter between them,
and to tell about it so that it might reach the Faculty would be simply
tale-bearing.”
“What kind of a boy is Eddy?”
“Not very good and not especially bad, but just weak. He is terribly cut
up about the thing, doesn’t study any, and cries a lot in his room. I
can’t help pitying him, though I don’t sympathize with him much.”
Dick smiled: “I suppose you’d do differently in his place.”
Phil grew indignant. “I rather think I should. To begin with, I
shouldn’t be in his place. I wouldn’t touch that Bosworth with a
ten-foot pole. But supposing that I did get into the scrape, I’d take it
as a warning to leave Bosworth and gambling alone, and write home an
honest letter about the whole business.”
“And that’s the very thing Eddy ought to do,” said Melvin, giving Phil’s
shoulder a slap. “Why didn’t you tell him so?”
“I did,” replied Phil, “but he is afraid to, and he wouldn’t listen at
all to my idea of telling Mr. Graham about it without mentioning
Bosworth’s name.”
Dick grinned. Mr. Graham, the principal of Seaton, ruled the school with
a strong hand. His was not a mailed fist in a velvet glove, but a
strong, dexterous hand gloved in velvet with a mail back. The whole
school saw the steel exterior; few really appreciated the gentleness of
the clasp.
“I suppose they’d be fired if it came out,” went on Phil.
“They wouldn’t have time to say good-by, or at least Bosworth wouldn’t.
I’m not so certain about Eddy.”
A knock at the door was followed by the appearance of a head. Seeing
that the visitor was Tompkins, Phil opened his Greek Grammar and plunged
vigorously into study as if he had no other interest in the world.
Tompkins looked from one sober face to the other, then gave a glance
over Phil’s shoulder at the page of the open book.
“Metres of Aristophanes! Is that what they give here to beginners in
Greek? If it is, I’m glad I began out West.”
Phil shut the book with a bang, and replied half petulantly, half amused
that he should have betrayed himself so easily, “No, it isn’t; I was
thinking.”
“Unpleasant thoughts,” said Tompkins, with another glance at Melvin’s
face. “Well, I guess I won’t bother you any more to-day.”
There was no reply to this, and the visitor moved toward the door. As
his hand touched the knob a new thought struck him and he turned
suddenly on the boy.
“You haven’t been losing your money, too, have you, Phil?”
Was it the warm sympathy in the Westerner’s tone, or relief at finding
that others knew the secret, or natural indignation at an unwarranted
suspicion, that suddenly put to flight the boy’s reserve? Philip himself
could not have told.
“What do you take me for?” he demanded. “Not on your life!”
“Glad to hear it. Your classmate, Eddy, got bled pretty deep,” went on
Tompkins.
“We were just talking about him,” said Dick. “It’s a bad case.”
“An easy game for a card sharper,” said Tompkins, coolly, “and a big
piece of folly by a little fool. Neither the sharper nor the fool ought
to be here,—one’s too dangerous and the other’s too weak; but if I
should go to Grim and tell him about the thing, and let him do with the
fellow what he really ought to, I suppose I should never dare to look a
boy in the face again.”
“You probably wouldn’t enjoy life much in school afterwards,” said Dick,
thoughtfully.
“I thought as much,” Tompkins continued in the same tone. “If he stole
or murdered, we could complain to the authorities and have him arrested;
but as he’s only ruining the characters of a few little boys, it
wouldn’t be nice to tell on him. Great thing, this school honor, when
you understand it! Well, so long!”
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