INDUSTRIES OF THE TWINS
On the Sunday after the gymnasium exhibition came a snowstorm. It began
long before dawn and piled the snow higher and higher all through the
hours of daylight, slackening only as the early twilight fell. Marchmont
was not the only student who found in the weather an excuse for staying
away from church; but he was possibly alone in preparing his luncheon at
home, and so establishing his excuse on a consistent basis. At his
boarding-house the Sunday dinner came fortunately at night.
Wolcott tucked his trousers into his high arctics and ploughed joyously
through the heavy drifts, his cheeks tingling, his heart beating strong,
his whole muscular system delighting in resistance to the elements.
There were few people at church. Tompkins presently came in and dropped
into a place at the end of the pew bestowing on Wolcott a nod and a
droll, friendly smile. In that droll smile of Tompkins, Lindsay could
measure the progress of his five weeks in school. Very different had
been its effect a month before, as it had flashed abruptly over the
Westerner’s puggy countenance in that same pew. Now Wolcott could
receive it as from a friend, and return it with some sense of equality.
Then his cheeks had burned deep red with humiliation at the trick which
had been played on him.
It was a very simple trick. On his first Sunday in Seaton, Wolcott had
found on entering church a pew with a single occupant, a light-haired,
broad-faced fellow in the somewhat worn clothes which Tompkins clung to
by preference, as to old friends. The rusty youth politely moved along
to make room, and Wolcott took his seat close by the aisle. As the
ushers appeared with the plates for the offering, Wolcott, whose father
had instructed him to do his part toward supporting the church which he
attended, glanced guardedly about to learn if possible the standard of
giving which prevailed among the Seaton students. His neighbor, whose
appearance certainly gave no indication of wealth, drew out a bill and
held it in conspicuous readiness for the plate. The newcomer reasoned
quickly, “If that fellow gives a dollar, my part is at least two.” He
had just time to reach this conclusion, and hurriedly fish a bill from
his pocket, when the plate was before him. Dropping his two dollars into
it, with a sense of dignity maintained and duty done, he passed it on
for his schoolmate’s contribution. The latter, however, had suddenly
changed his purpose. He took the plate gravely, deposited a cent upon
it, and solemnly handed it back. Then, with a half-perceptible wink at
his gaping neighbor, and his droll smile breaking for a brief moment the
expressionless expanse of his face, he composed himself for the rest of
the service. As for Wolcott, he did not need to hear the smothered
chuckle behind him to be assured that his neighbor had deliberately
cajoled him. He did not regret the money, for it was spent in a good
cause; but to prove easy game for a booby like that was a serious blow
to his dignity.
The next day, knowing that the incident would go the rounds, he had
decided to make the best of it and start the tale himself. Poole heard
it with a broad grin of genuine delight.
“Just like Tommy! You ought to have seen him last year before Melvin
squelched him. We were all dead sure he’d be fired. He’s comparatively
harmless now.”
“I just wish he’d tried some one else, that’s all,” said Lindsay,
haughtily.
Poole laughed and glanced keenly at his companion. “You mustn’t take it
so seriously. There’s nothing personal about it.”
“I suppose he thought I looked rather simple,” said Wolcott, with a
smile that seemed a bit forced.
“Not at all. He knew you weren’t used to things yet, and so he tried his
little game. You ought to see him and the twins. There’s nothing simple
about them!”
“Does he try his tricks on them?”
“Does he? Well, I guess! They’re giving it back and forth all the time.
There hasn’t been a week since the Pecks entered school when Tommy
wasn’t laying for the Pecks or the Pecks for Tommy. Just keep tabs on
’em and you’ll see.”
And for the next few days Wolcott had kept tabs, as well as was possible
for a fellow who was still groping bewildered in the maze of new
experiences. One evening he dropped into the Pecks’ room to ask about a
lesson. The boys were laboring at their desks with a great air of
diligence. They looked up eagerly as he opened the door, and then
glanced at each other and laughed.
Wolcott, with the self-consciousness of a new boy, and with the
recollection of his increased contribution still fresh, turned violently
red. “What are you laughing at?” he demanded, determined that at any
rate these two youngsters should not flout him.
“Oh, nothing,” returned Peck Number One, whom Wolcott assumed to be
Duncan. “We thought it was some one else.” Then the pair laughed
together, and Wolcott knew that his fears were groundless.
“Just stay here awhile and you’ll see some fun,” said Number Two.
“There, they’re coming out now!”
A door opened farther up the hall, there was the sound of voices, then
of stamping and loud words.
“They’re trying to get ’em up!” said Number One, giggling excitedly.
Number Two tiptoed to the door and opening it slightly let in the sound
of scraping and maledictions. “For editors of the _Lit_, they use pretty
poor language,” he said.
Wolcott could repress his curiosity no longer.
“I think I’ll go out and see what’s up,” he said. “If there’s anything
doing, I should like a sight of it.”
In front of Tompkins’s door was a group of four, bending over several
pairs of rubbers. Tompkins on his knees was laboring with a screw-driver
to loosen one from the floor.
“Can I help you?” asked Lindsay, with mock politeness. The contribution
trick still rankled in his memory.
“Yes, go and drown those two Pecks!” growled the irate Tompkins, as he
freed one rubber from the floor and attacked another. “They’ve screwed
down the whole lot. I’d like to wear out every blessed rubber on their
backs!”
“How do you know they did it?” asked Lindsay, much interested.
“Because I saw one as I came up,” said Planter, eagerly. “I was late to
the meeting and almost ran over one of them right near the door.”
“Which one?”
“Yes, which!” grumbled Tompkins, “the one with the mole on his
shoulder-blade or the one without? Of course he doesn’t know which.
They’re as much alike as two leaves on a tree. The only thing to do is
to lynch them both.”
Lindsay returned to the Pecks’ room, where the twins were waiting in
gleeful suspense.
“Who are they, anyway?” asked Wolcott.
“The editors of the _Literary Monthly_,” answered Donald, pompously,
“meeting for the first time with the new member, Mr. Tompkins.”
“I wish they’d print their parting remarks on the rubber question,”
chuckled Duncan. “I guess ’twould be the last number of the _Lit_ that
board would publish.”
The sounds from without now indicated that the rubbers had been rescued,
and on the feet of their owners were travelling down the stairs.
Presently the door shook under a tremendous thump, and the angry
Tompkins appeared on the threshold. He was really angry, there was no
disguising the fact. The twins looked and trembled,—momentarily
trembled,—for the presence of their heavy-limbed caller soon reassured
them, and their awe before the senior’s wrath was no match for their
glee at his discomfiture. So they grinned up at him with tantalizing
coolness, and Donald, who was nearest the door, invited him to sit down.
“I didn’t come here to sit down,” Tompkins began furiously; “I came to
punch your two heads for you!”
“Very kind of you, I’m sure,” said Duncan. “You don’t mind telling us
why, I hope?”
“I don’t need to. You know what I mean too blamed well. You screwed down
those rubbers in front of my door. Planter caught one of you at it.”
“Which one?” asked Donald, with a snicker.
“How does he know?” retorted the angry senior. “It makes no difference,
anyway. One’s as bad as the other, whichever did it. If I thrash you
both, I can’t go far wrong.”
“That wouldn’t be square,” said Duncan. “If one of us did it, that one
ought to be punished; but you’ve got to prove him guilty. Isn’t that
right, Lindsay?”
Lindsay nodded; he owed Tompkins one himself.
Tompkins snorted. “If you think you’re always going to crawl out of that
hole, you’re mistaken. Just keep on with your monkey tricks, and one of
these days one of you’ll wake up with a black eye, and then for a couple
of weeks you can be told apart.”
On this prospect the Peck brothers had no comment to offer. So Tompkins
continued less violently: “I don’t care so much about what you do to me;
when you strike at my friends, it’s a different matter. They come to see
me, and get their rubbers punched full of holes. I tell you I won’t
stand for it.”
“I’ll tell you what, Tommy!” exclaimed Duncan, swelling with a great
idea, “let’s start a subscription to buy them some new ones. We’ll get
two long sheets of foolscap, head them ‘Subscriptions to buy new Rubbers
for the Editors of the _Lit_,’ and send them round. A cent apiece all
over school will pay the bill and more.”
“I guess that won’t be necessary,” said Tompkins, who had no desire to
become a school joke. “The thing can’t be settled in that way.”
“It’ll pay up for that gym scheme you put up on us,” suggested Donald.
“Overpay,” said Tompkins, significantly, as he turned to go. “I’m owing
you now.”
Only a few weeks had passed since these things happened, and yet, as
Wolcott sat in church that stormy morning waiting for the service to
begin, these scenes and others flitted before his mind like
recollections of a remote period. He had learned much in the short
interval of ways and places and fellow-students. Poole, Durand, Planter,
Tompkins, and the twins he counted friends; and with Marchmont he was
intimate. The teachers he knew in name and lineage, history,
peculiarities, faults, and virtues. He no longer mentioned them to his
associates as Professor A and Dr. B and Mr. C; they were Peter and
Swipesy and Moore, and so on down to the unfortunate latest comer, Mr.
Owen, who struggled thrice daily against fearful odds in Room 10.
On the next day the sky was again clear, and Wolcott as soon as his
first recitation was over put on his snowshoes and started out for an
experimental tramp, in preparation for the expedition of the Snowshoe
Club in the afternoon. Being out of practice, and quite well aware that
he presented a not altogether graceful figure, he took a cross-cut over
the garden fences to an outlying field. As he passed the boarding-house
where Laughlin waited on table, he glanced up at the kitchen window, and
beheld the broad chest and massive face fronting a dish pan, and the big
hands working with cloth and plates. The captain nodded cordially, but
Wolcott hardly returned the greeting.
Dish washing! That was certainly the limit. A school captain washing
dishes! Shovelling snow, tending furnaces, could be forgiven; but dish
washing, never!