THE OPENING OF THE LEAGUE GAMES
“You liar! You mucker! You low-down telltale!” shouted Walter, looking
straight into the face of his roommate. “I might have known you’d spy
on me. That’s what all the fellows said you’d do! And now you’ve done
it!”
Dan rose as Walter’s tirade continued. For a moment he looked steadily
at the angry boy and, though his face was colorless, without a word he
started toward the door.
“Hold on!” shouted Walter, springing in front of Dan and closing the
door. “You don’t crawl out that way! I’d like to know what you have to
say for yourself. We’ll have this out right now while we’re at it. I’d
like to know what you have to say for yourself!”
“About what?”
“About what I’ve just said.”
“You’ll have to explain yourself.”
“‘Explain’; ‘Explain’!” retorted Walter. “I ‘explain’! You’re the one,
I guess, to do the explaining. Gus Kiggins says you can make a pet of a
toad, but a toad will still be a toad to the end of the chapter, and I
guess he’s about right.”
“How about a hog, Walter?” The sneering query escaped Dan’s lips
before he was fairly aware of what he had said. Deeply as he regretted
his momentary failure to control his tongue he was aware that his
provocation was great and that he had been most unjustly accused.
“Who are you to talk about hogs?” demanded Walter.
“I know a little about them. We raised a few on the farm. They are
interesting animals, Walter, if you go at them in the right way.”
“That hasn’t anything to do with this matter. What I want to know is
why you told my father.”
“Told him what?”
“About me.”
“What did I tell him about you?”
“That’s just what I want to know.”
“Did he say that I told him anything?”
“Of course he didn’t.”
“Then what are you talking about?”
“He knew a lot of things that he couldn’t have found out unless you
told him.”
“Who said so? Did Gus Kiggins?”
“I guess I know that without any of the fellows having to tell me.”
“What did your father know?”
“He knew a lot of things. He told me that if I didn’t do better he
would be compelled to take me out of school. He said he’d put me
to work in the shops!” The expression of disgust that appeared on
Walter’s face as he referred to the “shops” in his father’s factory
might have made Dan laugh at another time, but he felt no such
inclination now. The matter was too serious.
“Look here, Walter!” said Dan. “Do you mean to tell me that you
honestly believe I reported you to your father?”
“That’s the only way he could have found out some things.”
“Let me ask you a question. Do you know when your father came here?”
“Why, this afternoon, I suppose,” replied Walter in surprise.
“No, sir. He came on the eight-thirty train this morning.”
“He did? Where was he all the forenoon?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. Couldn’t you guess?”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” said Walter slowly. “When did you first see
him?”
“When I came into our room after the Latin hour.”
“That was only a few minutes before I came,” replied Walter, feeling
relieved.
“Yes. As far as I recall, Walter, he asked me only one question.”
“What was that?”
“He asked my opinion about Gus Kiggins.”
“What did you say?” inquired Walter, looking anxiously into his
roommate’s face.
“Nothing that amounted to anything. I didn’t have to, even if I had
wanted to, for he knew pretty much all about him. I would have just as
good a right, Walter, to say that you told him about me as you have to
say that I told, for he asked me about those ten marks Mr. Sharp gave
me and he knew too, that I’d been on the ‘limits.’ Did you tell him,
Walter?”
“Of course I didn’t. You know that as well as I do.” Walter’s voice was
different now and there were traces of a smile about the corners of his
mouth.
“I’m sure you didn’t,” said Dan warmly.
“The ‘old boy’ is nobody’s fool――――”
“The who?” interrupted Dan sharply.
“Oh, my father, if that’s what you want me to say.”
“Look here, Walter, I haven’t any father. When I see some of you
fellows with yours, do you know there’s nothing in all the world that
I want deep down in my heart as I do what you’ve got and I haven’t.
But if I did have one, and he was a man as true and interested as
your father is and did as much for me as your father does for you, it
doesn’t seem to me that I’d speak disrespectfully of him or let any
other fellow do it, either.”
“Oh, he’s all right,” said Walter flippantly. “He means to do the right
thing. I understand that as well as you do. The greatest trouble is
that he doesn’t just understand a fellow――――”
“Maybe a part of the trouble, Walter, is because he does understand.
Ever thought of that?”
“No, that isn’t the way of it. My mother does.” Dan smiled as he
recalled the weak and somewhat vain little woman who thought she was
manifesting a greater love for her boy because she upheld and defended
him right or wrong. “Of course I know,” resumed Walter, “that my father
is a mighty smart man. It takes a cool hand to get ahead of him. He’s
the best business man in his line. Why, Dan, he’s built up the business
his father left him till now he has just four times as many men in the
shops as he had when he began. When you say that he had been here all
the morning, why, that puts things in a different light. He probably
‘got busy.’ Understand, Dan, that I didn’t really mean to accuse you of
going to him with stories about me, though you’ll have to own up that
it did look a bit suspicious when I found him alone with you and that
he knew all about me.”