SCHOOL LIFE
“You stirred up the animals, Walter,” said Hodge after Gus had taken
his departure. “Don’t do it any more. Gussie is all right enough if
you don’t bear on too hard. Look at the shoulders on him. No wonder
he’s the next to the best boxer in school. The trouble with him is
that he counted upon being the pitcher on the school nine next spring,
that’s all. It’s a little bit rough, you know, to be waked up by an
earthquake.”
“He stands about as much chance of being pitcher as I do of being King
of Timbuctoo or of Oshkosh,” sniffed Walter.
“He doesn’t have a ghost of a show if Richards can do again what he did
to-day,――strike out the three heaviest hitters on the nine,” laughed
Ned.
“Yes, and strike out each of them twice in succession,” added Walter.
“Good work, old man!” said Hodge affectionately patting Dan on the
shoulder. “We’ll leave you here. Look out for Gus. If he meets you
alone some dark night he may pitch into you.”
“Hello, Carlton,” said Dan, as he and his roommate were about to enter
their hall. “What’s wrong?” The little fellow’s face was pale and it
was manifest that he had been crying.
“Somebody poured water in my bed,” said Carlton. “My room is all mussed
up too. I――I think I’ll――――”
“You’ll what?” asked Dan kindly as the boy hesitated.
“I――I think I’ll write my mother and ask her to let me come home.”
“No, no. That isn’t the way. I’ll go over with you, and we’ll set
matters to rights in a minute. Do you know who did it?”
“I think I do. I am almost sure――――”
“Well, don’t let him know that you know, whoever it is.”
“Why not?”
“Because you may have more trouble if you do.”
“But I don’t want to sleep in a wet bed. I’ll catch cold.”
“Take your bedding off and let it dry.”
“Maybe they’ll pour more water on it if I do.”
“I guess not.”
“Hello; got a protector have you?” Dan looked up as he heard the
question, and saw Gus Kiggins before him. “Well, you’ll need his help,
I guess,” continued Gus, as he looked again at the troubled little lad.
“He wants his mamma, doesn’t he? Poor little darling! Do the naughty
bad boys plague him? He mustn’t play with muckers. It is naughty and it
is not nice. Come――――”
“That’s enough!” broke in Dan quietly.
“Enough of what?” demanded Gus as he instantly turned to face Dan. His
manner betrayed his anger and it was manifest that he resented the
quiet words of the new boy.
“Enough of picking on a little fellow,” said Dan steadily.
“What is it to you?”
“I sha’n’t stand by and see Carlton abused.”
“He needs a little attention――and so do you! And you’ll both get it.”
Dan did not move from his position nor did he reply to the words of his
angry classmate. As he looked at Gus he saw that the boy undoubtedly
was possessed of great physical strength. He was not any taller than
he, but was much heavier. Dan recalled too, what one of the boys
had said, that “Gus Kiggins was one of the best boxers in the Tait
School.” The fellow was angry now and not only inclined to quarrel, but
apparently ready to seek trouble. Dan was also aware of the feeling of
jealousy which doubtless had been aroused by what he had seen of his
pitching in the scrub game of baseball. “Here comes Squint!” exclaimed
Gus suddenly in a low voice, as the teacher who was in charge of the
entry came into the hall. “That saves you this time, but if you don’t
learn how to mind your own business you’ll get some teaching that
isn’t down in the catalogue!” With this parting threat Gus turned and
left the hall. The teacher nodded to the two boys who remained in the
entry, and at once entered his room.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” exclaimed Carlton to Dan.
“For what?”
“For taking my part against that big bully.”
“Has he ever troubled you before?”
“Yes. He pulled my ears this morning, and when I cried he picked me up
in his arms and held me over the balusters.”
“What did you do then?”
“I cried――a little.”
“What for?”
“Because I was scared. He might have dropped me,” replied Carlton,
unable to conceal his surprise as he looked at Dan.
“Did it make him stop when you cried?”
“No. He is a big bully! I guess he’ll find out that I don’t like him
very well!”
Dan repressed the smile that rose to his lips and looked down at the
little fellow before him. Plainly Carlton was a “spoiled” boy who never
had been taught to consider anyone but himself. What a multitude of new
elements the shrinking selfish little lad had to learn!
“Do you think Gus Kiggins will cry when he finds out that you don’t
like him very well, Carlton?” Dan inquired quizzically.
“He’s just a big bully, that’s all he is!” said Carlton. “I don’t like
the boys here anyway. I guess I’ll go home. My mother told me I might
leave if I didn’t want to stay.”
“What will your father say?”
“I haven’t any father. He’s dead.”
“Have you any brothers?”
“No.”
Dan’s knowledge of life was limited, but he thought he saw plainly the
training which Carlton had received. Doubtless, he surmised, the boy’s
mother in her loneliness and grief had devoted herself to the only
child she had. His every wish was granted, his will never was thwarted,
and he ruled his mother as a tyrant might have done.
“Carlton,” Dan said quietly, “what do the fellows call the boy that
runs away or cries when he has something hard to do?”
“I don’t know what they call him and I don’t care. I won’t stand it to
have that big bully pull my ears or let the boys pour water in my bed!
My mother――――”
“Did you know my father is dead too?” broke in Dan.
“No. Is he?”
“Yes. I’ve got a lot of hard things to learn too. I am sure I shall
feel just as you do many times, but I’m not going to run. The boys all
think the fellow that runs away is a coward.”
“But you’re big and strong.”
“In some ways.”
“You aren’t afraid of Gus Kiggins.”
“No, but there are some other things that I’m afraid of.”
“What are they?”
“A good many.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I’ve thought already of doing just what you say you’re going to
do, but I’ve decided to stay and fight it out.”
“I can’t fight.”
“Yes, you can!”
“I’d like to know how.”
“If you’ll try you’ll soon learn.”
“Will you show me how?” asked Carlton eagerly.
“I’ll show you all I know, but that isn’t much.”
“Yes, it is! I know it is! I’m coming over to have you show me. I’d
like to find out――――”
“Come whenever you want to,” said Dan as he smiled and at once departed
from the hall. As he walked to his room he was thinking of what the
little fellow had said. He wanted to run away from his troubles.
“That’s just like me,” said Dan to himself. “I haven’t learned to do
what a lot of the fellows here have, and just because it’s hard for me
to learn I wanted to play the baby act too. Well, I guess Carlton and
I are in the same boat. We’ll have to learn how to paddle or just be
carried down stream. That’s all there is to it.”
“Where have you been?” asked Walter as Dan entered the room.
“Oh, I went over to his room with that Carlton Hall. He’s a little
fellow and a new boy――green in some ways as I am,” Dan added.
“What’s the matter with him?”
“He’s having his troubles. The boys upset his room, pour water in his
bed――and――――”
“That’s enough, isn’t it!” laughed Walter. “Oh well, it’s a hard row
to hoe, but it’ll do him good. He’ll learn pretty soon how to pitch
into the fellows and drive them out. It’s the only way. Dan, you did
yourself proud to-day.”
“Did I?”
“Yes, sir, you did! The fellows are wild about you. When you struck out
Hodge and Smith and Gus Kiggins, our three heaviest hitters, twice in
succession they all said you were surely the real thing.”
“Did Gus Kiggins say so?”
“Not exactly,” laughed Walter. “His nose is out of joint. You wouldn’t
exactly expect him to be happy over such a thing.”
“No,” assented Dan.
“He’ll be all right though, he’ll have to be. He isn’t very popular
with the fellows anyhow.”
“He can play ball.”
“Yes, he’s a good player all right enough, but he’s a dirty player. He
was center on the football team last fall, but Samson wouldn’t let him
hold down the place.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, Gus had a way when the ball was snapped back of grabbing dirt in
each hand and then rubbing it into the eyes of the center of the other
team. Then he had a trick of grabbing the other center right by the leg
and pinching his muscles so hard that the fellow was limp as a rag. Of
course it wasn’t so bad when it came to his putting up a game like that
with the Military Academy. They’re a lot of muckers themselves and any
trick is fair in war, you know.”
“Gus Kiggins said I was a mucker.”
“Yes, I know he did, but you mustn’t mind a little thing like that. Gus
is sore.”
“Sore?”
“Why, yes,” laughed Walter. “He’d counted upon being the pitcher of the
school nine next spring. Naturally he doesn’t enjoy having you take his
place. You wouldn’t like it yourself.”
“I haven’t taken his place yet.”
“You’re dead sure of it, Dan, if you can keep up such work as you were
doing this afternoon. All the fellows say so. They’re warm for forming
the new league too. I think myself it’s a sure thing. We’ll have the
pennant in baseball too, if you pitch your game. Dan, you’ll be the
king!”
Dan smiled at the suggestion, though the words of praise were sweet to
him. To an extent they served to drive away some of the darker feelings
that had been in his mind. He decided in his quiet way that he would
keep his eyes open and perhaps some of the things in which he was
aware that his training was deficient might be improved without his
roommate referring to them, for in spite of his unassuming ways Dan was
keenly sensitive to the suggestions for improvement which Walter felt
free to make.
That same evening after supper Smith, Hodge, and Ned all came to Dan’s
room, and their words of praise for the work of the afternoon were
doubly soothing to Dan’s troubled heart. After all, perhaps, he was not
entirely out of place among the boys of the Tait School, he thought.
As the conversation turned to other matters and Ned’s words kept his
companions in good humor, Dan felt himself strongly drawn to the boy.
Sturdy, thickly set, his round face plain in feature, but lighted up by
his love of fun and his manifest friendliness for everyone, Dan decided
that Ned was one of the boys to whom anyone might turn with confidence.
Whatever Ned’s defects might be, he was true.
“Look here, Ned,” Smith was saying, “do you see that scar on my cheek?”
“I do,” replied Ned. “What of it?”
“I got it in the cars the other day. I had to stand, and right in front
of me was a woman who had a long hatpin in her hat. I tell you such
things ought to be stopped by law. I’m opposed to them.”
“Yes. You’re against long hatpins, so to speak,” laughed Ned. “Well,
I’ve been against them myself several times.”
“That’s all right,” said Hodge as the boys laughed. “You want to keep
away from those things.”
“My father told me just before I left home how to keep the doctor
away,” said Smith.
“How?”
“‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away.’ That’s poetry. You fellows
might not know it, so I’m repeating it for your benefit.”
“I know something better than an apple to keep him away,” said Ned.
“What’s that?”
“An onion. That’ll keep the doctor and everybody else away too.”
“Ned, we’ll have to shut you up if you don’t quit that,” said Hodge.
“That makes me think of something that happened at home just before I
left for school,” continued Ned, unabashed. “My father was looking for
a new chauffeur. There was one chap that applied for the place that my
father rather liked, though I didn’t agree with him exactly. Finally
my father asked the fellow how long he had been in his last position.
‘Five years,’ the fellow told him. ‘That’s a good record――a remarkably
good record in these days,’ my father said. You know he always says
‘these days’ as if he thought the world somehow was running down and
was almost out, and the worst of it is he always looks straight at me
when he says it.”
“I wonder why,” suggested Hodge soberly.
“I wonder about it too,” said Ned.
“Oh, go on with your chauffeur,” said Smith. “We’ve got to hear about
him, I suppose, so let’s get through with it. I’ve got something I want
to say, but no one ever has a chance when Ned is around. He even talks
in his sleep. You wind him up and――――”
“Keep still there, you one of a million varieties. I’m doing this.
Where was I when you broke in with your drivel?” asked Ned.
“You were giving us a long-drawn-out tale of your new chauffeur,” said
Walter. “Probably all you wanted was to let us know that you had a car.
What kind is it?”
“The kind that little Alexander and little Moses had in the bulrushes,”
suggested Hodge. “The kind that mother used to make.”
“This applicant for the proud position of chauffeur in my ancestral
domicile――――”
“Be-a-u-ti-ful language,” drawled Smith. “My, I wish I could talk that
way.”
“This applicant said, in response to my father’s question,” continued
Ned unabashed, “that he had been five years in his last place. ‘Fine
record,’ said my pater, much delighted. ‘Why did you leave?’ he then
asked the chap.”
“Ah, I know the answer to that,” said Hodge. “That came over in the
Mayflower. That was told to J. Smith by Pocahontas.”
“What was the answer. I never heard it,” said Walter.
“Why, the fellow left his last place because he was pardoned out or his
term had expired, I forget which,” groaned Hodge.