CHANGED RELATIONS
The relations between Dan and Walter were daily becoming more strained.
Gus Kiggins was a less frequent visitor than he had been formerly,
but Dan was convinced that this simply meant that Walter was spending
more time in the room or company of the boy for whom Dan had formed
an intense dislike. The threatened trouble between himself and Gus
apparently had vanished and even little Carlton Hall was not troubled
as he formerly had been. The lad was a bright little fellow and in
the classroom was already making a reputation for his quickness. Now
that his first feeling of homesickness was gone and there had come a
comparative freedom from his tormentors, Carlton was entering more
fully into the spirit of the life of the school.
For Dan the little fellow’s admiration, as well as his devotion,
steadily increased. More and more Carlton sought Dan’s room and
company. If Walter objected, he did not say so, though his unconcealed
contempt was not lacking. But Dan and Walter, though they occupied the
same rooms, were no longer such warm friends as once they had been.
There were not many times when the boys quarreled. It was rather an
absence of all friendly relations that marked their daily lives.
As the weeks passed Dan’s steady work began to tell. After the
Christmas vacation he was among the few boys of his class who were
permitted to study in their rooms instead of in the study-room, where
the other boys assembled every afternoon and evening and did their
work under the direction of a teacher, who for Dan’s class was Mr.
Sharp. At first Dan had almost decided to keep on with his work in the
study-room, because of his feeling that he could do better work there,
but his lack of respect for this particular teacher finally led him to
accept the privilege and his study-hours were therefore spent in the
quiet of his own room.
A strong friendship had sprung up between Hodge, Ned, Smith, and
Dan. At the Christmas holidays the three boys had been visitors in
Dan’s home in Rodman. The country life in winter had been so new and
novel to the visitors that the three boys had highly enjoyed their
vacation-time. The fact that Dan’s home was a humble one apparently
only served to increase the feeling of friendliness which they had for
Dan, while for his quiet little mother everyone had an admiration that
was as strong as the respect and affection for her boy. Dan had urged
Walter to come to Rodman with his friends, but the latter had curtly
declined and Dan had not repeated the invitation.
On the train which the four boys took when the day of departure from
Rodman arrived, Dan and Ned were seated together. The enthusiasm
of Dan’s friends over their visit was keen and in course of their
conversation Ned said to Dan: “It’s simply great! I never coasted right
over the tops of fences before. The crust was hard enough to hold up a
horse.”
“The coasting is all right,” replied Dan lightly. “It is the snow-shovel
that is the instrument of torture. When you have shoveled through two or
three of those eight-foot drifts you lose a little of your enthusiasm
for snow that sometimes comes in November and stays right with us till
April. Last year we had a hundred and forty-three days of sleighing.”
“Great!” exclaimed Ned. “That is what puts the breath of life into you.
I can understand now where you get some of the nerve you’ve shown.”
“‘Nerve’! I don’t know that I have any nerve.”
“Well, you have, whether you know it or not.”
“I guess it’s because you’re my friend that you say that.”
“Not a bit. It takes nerve to do what you’re doing.”
“I don’t see how.”
“Look here, Dan, I know it’s none of my business, but I’ve sometimes
been afraid you’d leave school.”
“Why should I?” asked Dan, though his face betrayed something of his
feeling, which was not altogether surprise.
“Why, we all know――it’s none of my business,” said Ned lamely. “I don’t
suppose I ought to speak of such things.”
“Go ahead,” said Dan quietly.
“Well, you know,” said Ned hesitatingly, “all the fellows understand
how it is that you are in the Tait School.”
“That Mr. Borden pays my way?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t ask him.”
“Of course you didn’t. Everybody knows that, and what we’ve been afraid
of, now that Walter has shown himself to be such a chump, was that
you――that if he didn’t quit――that some day you’d――――”
“I’d what?” inquired Dan, aware of his friend’s confusion.
“Oh, that you’d quit and call the whole thing off,” said Ned.
“Would you?”
“I don’t know,” replied Ned in a low voice.
“I have thought of it,” said Dan quietly.
“We all know that. But don’t you do it.”
“Why not?”
“We’ll need you in the pitcher’s box, for one thing.”
“That’s what Walter thought when he got his father to take me up. You
know Walter was behind the whole thing.”
“It isn’t his fault or Gus Kiggins’ either if we don’t know it,” said
Ned angrily.
“What does Gus say?”
“You know what he says.”
“That I’m a charity patient.”
“Nobody pays any attention to what he says, anyway,” said Ned.
“I’m not so sure of that. Honestly, Ned, what would you do if you were
in my place?” asked Dan quietly.
“I don’t know, though I know what I want you to do.”
“Stay on?”
“Yes.”
“And put up with what Gus Kiggins says and does?”
“He doesn’t count for much.”
“Then, with what Walter says?”
“That’s harder, I’ll own up; but――――”
“But what?”
“What does Mr. Borden say?”
“Nothing. He hasn’t said a word.”
“Have you said anything to him?”
“Not yet.”
“Then don’t.”
“Look here, Ned,” said Dan, turning about in the seat and facing his
companion, “I’ll tell you that sometimes the whole affair is more than
I can stand. I didn’t ask to come. I had a little money saved and I
was going to the normal school. I wish now I had and hadn’t taken a
cent from Mr. Borden. But he came to me and told me it was all pure
sentiment on my part that made me draw back. He went on to say that he
hadn’t any foolish notions about such things, that in his business he
depended a good deal upon the things his friends could throw his way,
and that he never refused any of them because of any such feelings as I
pretended to have. Then he told me that I could look upon it as a pure
matter of business. That Walter was a spoiled boy and that it would be
worth a good deal more to him――I mean Mr. Borden――to pay what my term
bills would cost just to have me room with Walter. Of course, I wanted
to come, and when he put it in that light I couldn’t find any reason
why I shouldn’t take up with his offer.”
“There wasn’t any reason!” exclaimed Ned warmly.
“Perhaps not――and yet as a business proposition, look at it for
a minute. It isn’t very modest of me to say so, but Mr. Borden
thought――or at least he implied――that what influence I had over Walter
would pay what it might cost his father to have me room with him. But
look at it! You all say that Walter is a ‘chump.’ He’s away down in
his classes and if I should suggest to him to do certain things that
would be the surest way of getting him to do just the opposite. Walter
doesn’t like me. He chums with Gus Kiggins――――”
“He doesn’t stick to anything very long, and there isn’t any reason
for believing that Gus will be an exception.”
“I am not sure of that. Gus seems to have him under his thumb.”
“Get him out from under it.”
“How?”
“Can’t some of us help?”
“How?” again inquired Dan with a smile.
“Oh, we can have a talk with Walter, or we can put it up to Gus.”
“No,” said Dan. “Perhaps a word with Walter sometime, if it came in all
right might be a good thing, but I don’t want you to say anything to
Gus.”
“Why not?”
“It would make a bad matter worse. You see, this is a part of my
course, I guess. I’ve had to learn a lot of things――――”
“You’re learning them all right,” broke in Ned. “You’re in the first
division now, and can study in your room――――”
“I don’t mean that.”
“What do you mean then?”
“Oh, some other things. I’ve had a lot to learn. I’ve lived on a farm
all my life, and there, you know, they don’t always do things just as
you fellows do who have been brought up in the city.”
“What of it?”
“A whole lot of it. You don’t understand because you’ve always had
them. But I’ve had to keep my eyes open, and even then I find I’m
doing something that makes my cheeks burn. The first night I was in
the school Walter had to tell me to put my butter on my butter-plate,
not on――――”
“The chump!” broke in Ned.
“No; he meant it all right. I guess I deserved it and a good deal more.
Perhaps if I learn these little things now I sha’n’t have to learn them
later when it would be a good deal harder for me.”
“You make too much of such things.”
“Do I?”
“Yes, you do. Nobody thinks of them except you.”
“They don’t have to.”
“You’re all right now, anyway, Dan.”
Dan smiled and did not reply, though the words of his friend were far
more comforting than Ned could understand.
“There’s one way out of it,” continued Ned.
“What is that?”
“You give Gus all that is coming to him. You can do it! You――――”
“What do you mean?”
“Thrash him.”
Dan threw back his head and laughed. “What good would that do?” he
inquired. “Perhaps I couldn’t do it. He’s about the best boxer in
school.”
“I’d risk it.”
“That’s good of you,” said Dan dryly. “My grandfather told me once that
when he was a little fellow his older brothers tried to get him to rob
a bumblebee’s nest they’d found in the hay-field. When he said he was
afraid the bees would sting him, the boys told him to go ahead, ‘They’d
risk it.’”
Ned laughed as he said, “And you think I’d be willing to take the risk
if you took on Gus?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No, you didn’t; but you implied it. I’m not afraid of Gus Kiggins.”
“I wasn’t thinking about him.”
“What are you afraid of then?”
“Myself. Suppose I should fight him, and then suppose I did succeed in
whipping him――and that’s something I’m not a bit sure of――what would I
prove?”
“You’d put him where he belongs, anyway.”
“I told you I wasn’t thinking about him. I was thinking of myself.”
“A fellow isn’t called upon to stand everything.”
“That’s right.”
“And yet you say you won’t even defend yourself.”
“Did I say that?”
“That’s what you meant.”
“Hardly,” said Dan with a smile.
“Well, whatever you decide to do, promise me you won’t do anything
before you tell me.”
“I promise you as far as Walter and Mr. Borden are concerned.”
“All right. That’s all I want. Hello, here we are at the Junction.
Some of the fellows ought to get on here. There are some of them,” Ned
added as he arose in his seat and peered from the window of the car.
“Here comes Gus Kiggins himself!” he added hastily.
Several boys noisily entered the car, Gus leading the crowd. As he
caught sight of the four boys he hastened down the aisle and, stopping
in front of Dan, looked insolently at him and then in his loudest tones
began to shout, “Co’ boss! Co’ boss! Co’ boss!”