TROUBLE FOR TOM
Dorothy and Milly Stokes were chaired round the courts by ardent
admirers, and they were cheered until their heads ached from the noise.
As soon as Dorothy could escape she went in search of Tom. It was some
time before she could find him; and when she did run him down he was in
a temper that was anything but sweet.
“Oh, Tom! I am so sorry for the trouble,” she burst out with ready
sympathy. Tom usually wore such a happy face, that it was just dreadful
to see him looking so glum.
“It is pretty rotten,” he growled. “We are to be hauled up before the
Head in the morning, and goodness knows what will happen then. There is
one comfort—I am not the only one in the soup; there are about
twenty-five of us involved. The thing that passes my comprehension is
how it all came out.”
“Don’t you know?” gasped Dorothy, so amazed at his words that she had no
time to think of being discreet.
“How should I know?” he said blankly. “Why, you might have knocked me
down with a feather when Clarges Major told me we’d been spotted, and
that the game was up so far as our night-club was concerned. It has been
such a jolly lark, too! We used to go about three nights a week, and get
back about three o’clock in the morning. Some club it was, too, I can
tell you! Say, Dorothy, how did you know anything about it?”
“Joan Fletcher told me. She told me how Rhoda had written all about the
club to your Head, because you would not lend her the money when she was
in a hole about the archery club subscriptions.” Dorothy spoke in a
quiet tone; she was determined that Tom should know the true facts of
the case. But she quailed a little when he turned upon her with fury in
his face.
“Rhoda told because I would not lend her the money! What on earth are
you driving at? That time when she talked to me about being so short, I
told her then that I was in the same boat—absolutely stoney.”
“It was because you did not answer her letter, when she gave you
twenty-four hours to find some money to help her out of her fix.”
Dorothy stopped suddenly because of the surprise in Tom’s face. “Didn’t
you have that letter?” she asked.
“I have never set eyes on it,” he answered. “When did she send it, and
how?”
“I don’t know,” answered Dorothy. “Joan told me that Rhoda was so angry
and so very desperate because you did not answer her letter, that, to
pay you out for leaving her in the lurch, she wrote a letter to Dr.
Cameron, telling him about the night-club. A little after her letter
went she got the money she wanted from home, and she would have recalled
her letter to your Head then if she had been able to do it, but, of
course, it was too late.”
“The insufferable little cad, to blow on us like that out of sheer
cattish spite!” growled Tom. Then he asked, with sharp anxiety in his
tone, “Has it leaked out yet among our crowd that Rhoda told?”
“I am afraid so,” answered Dorothy, and again she quailed at the look in
his eyes. “Didn’t you hear all the booing when we won the cup?”
“Of course. I booed myself with might and main; but that was only
because we had lost it,” said Tom.
Dorothy shook her head. “I am afraid it is more than that—there was
such a lot of malice in the noise. Hazel told me that some one threw a
bag of flour at Rhoda, and written across the bag were the words ‘For a
sneak’; so it looks as if they knew.”
“If that is the case, you bet I am in for it right up to my back teeth,”
growled Tom; and turning he walked away with never another word to
Dorothy, who reflected sorrowfully that he was much more concerned at
the prospect of losing the goodwill of his fellows than because he was
implicated in such a serious breach of rules and regulations.
Dorothy did not see him again that day. She did not see him on the next
day either; but rumours were rife in the girls’ school that the boys
involved in the night-club business were in for a row of magnitude.
The work of the week was so exacting and absorbing that Dorothy found
herself with but little time for thinking of Tom and his troubles.
On Sunday—the last Sunday of term it was—Tom appeared with the other
boys in the gardens of the girls’ school; but he looked so miserable
that Dorothy had a sudden, sharp anxiety about him.
“Oh, Tom, what is it?” she cried.
“Don’t you know?” he said, looking at her with tragic eyes. “The Head
has sent for the governor, and I don’t feel as if I could face him when
he comes.”
“For the governor?” echoed Dorothy blankly, and in the eyes of her mind
she was seeing those grave frock-coated gentlemen who had sat on the
dais in the lecture hall that day last autumn, at the enrolment of the
candidates for the Lamb Bursary. She wondered why Dr. Cameron had
thought it necessary to send for one of the school governors about a
case of school discipline.
“Father, I mean, and he is coming to-morrow.” Tom spoke impatiently, for
he thought Dorothy was much more thick in the head than she ought to
have been.
“Father coming to-morrow?” Dorothy’s voice rose in a shout of sheer
ecstasy. “Why, Tom, we will make him stay over Wednesday, and then he
will be present when the Bursary winner is declared!”
No sooner had she uttered that joyful exclamation than a cold chill
crept into her heart. How dreadful for her father to be present if she
had really won the Mutton Bone; for he would have to be told perhaps
that she could not be allowed to keep it because of that ugly fact of
his past, which had landed him in prison for fourteen days.
What a shame that there should be any clouds to mar his coming—and it
was really a cloud of an extra heavy sort that was the reason of his
being obliged to come.
“It is pretty rotten that he should have been sent for,” growled Tom.
“All the fathers have been asked to come. So you see Rhoda raised a
pretty heavy dust when she butted in.”
“Why have they all been sent for?” asked Dorothy in dismay. To her way
of thinking such extreme measures boded very ill for the culprits.
“The fathers and the masters are going to confer as to what is to be
done with us,” explained Tom, who was leaning against a tree and moodily
kicking at the turf. “Dr. Cameron has got a bee in his bonnet about the
gambling stunt going on in the schools; he is making a bid to wipe it
out for always—don’t you wish he may do it? He thinks the best way is
to let our governors take a hand in the business. He told us that if it
had only been a question of our sneaking out of dorm when we were
supposed to be fast asleep in bed, he would have dealt with the matter
himself, and taken care that we had so much work to do that we would be
thankful to stay in bed when we had a chance to get there.”
“Oh, Tom, how I wish you had never given way to betting and that sort of
thing!” cried Dorothy, dismayed at the turn things had taken.
“You’ll have to be more sorry still if I have to lose the scholarship,”
said Tom with a savage air.
“It won’t—it surely won’t come to that!” said Dorothy in dismay. Again
a pang smote her as she thought of the double trouble there might be in
store for the dear father. It did not even comfort her at the moment to
remember how wholly innocent she was of any hand in bringing on the
trouble which might arise on her account.
“It may do.” Tom’s tone was gloomy in the extreme. “On the other hand,
it may tell in my favour that I am a scholarship boy. The authorities
may argue that there must be good in me because I have worked so well in
the past. They will say that, as I am one of the youngest of the crowd,
I was doubtless led away by the seniors. Oh, there is certain to be a
way out for me.”
“I am not sure that you deserve to have a way out found for you,” she
said severely. “Oh, Tom, how could you bring such trouble on them at
home!”
“Don’t preach,” burst out Tom impatiently. “I get more than enough of
that from Bobby Felmore.”
“Bobby wasn’t in with the night-club crowd?” questioned Dorothy.
“Not he.” Tom snorted in derision of Bobby and Bobby’s standpoints. “He
is too smug for anything these days. Downright putrid, I call it. I’ve
no use for mugs.”
“Here comes Rhoda!” cried Dorothy with a little gasp of fright. “Oh,
Tom, what are you going to say to her?”
“Nothing,” he answered with a snarl. “If she were a boy I would fight
her. Seeing she is a girl, I can’t do that; so the only thing to be done
is to look right through her and out the other side without taking any
further notice of her.”
Rhoda bore down upon them with a little rush, her hands held out in
imploring fashion. “Oh, Tom,” she cried, “I am thankful to see you here!
Why have you not answered my letters? I have fairly squirmed in the dust
at your feet, begging forgiveness for my cattish temper. But I was
fairly desperate, or I should never have been so mad as to let you down,
and your crowd as well. Words won’t say how sorry I am——”
She broke off with a jerk, for Tom, after looking at her with a cold and
steady stare, turned on his heel and walked away, calling over his
shoulder as he went,—
“So long, Dorothy, old girl; see you later.”
For a moment Rhoda stood staring at Tom’s retreating figure as if she
could not believe her eyes, then she turned upon Dorothy with fury in
her face.
“This is your work, then?” she cried shrilly. “I always knew you were
jealous because Tom thought so much of me. A fine underhand piece of
work, to try and separate me from my friend!”
“I have not tried to separate you from Tom; it would not have been any
use,” said Dorothy calmly. “The separating, as you call it, was your own
work. Tom will have to bear such a lot from his crowd because of your
letter to his Head that he says he will not speak to you again.”
“Oh, he will come round,” Rhoda said, and tried to believe it; but she
was hurt in her pride—the more so because she had the sense to see that
she had brought the whole disaster on herself.
Dorothy turned away. She was feeling pretty sore herself because of the
trouble that was bringing her father to the Compton Schools just then.
It took away all her joy at the prospect of seeing him, to think how he
might have to suffer on her account before he went away. She could not
even comfort herself with the thought that she might not win the
Bursary, because if she did not win it herself, the probabilities were
that Rhoda would win it, in which case she was pledged to the Head to
reveal that thing against Rhoda which she had seen in the showrooms of
Messrs. Sharman and Song. What a miserable tangle it all was, and what a
shame that people could not be happy when they so badly wanted to be
free from care.
Monday came with hours of examination work. Happily, she was so absorbed
in it that she hardly noticed how the hours went by. There was an
archery contest in the afternoon. The younger boys came over, and some
of the seniors, but there were big gaps in the Fifth and the Sixth of
the boys’ school. None of the luckless twenty-five were present, they
being gated for that day and the next—that is to say, until the council
of fathers and masters had determined on what to do with them.
Dorothy guessed that she would not see her father that day. Tom had told
her he would reach Sowergate by the six-thirty train, and as he would go
straight to the boys’ school to dine with Dr. Cameron, and would have to
be at the council afterwards, there would be no chance of seeing him
until next morning.
She heard the train run in to Sowergate station, and there was a thrill
in her heart to think of her father being so near. The worst of it was
that she felt so bad on his account, because of what he would have to
face both for Tom at the boys’ school, and for herself at the girls’
school.
She was so tired that night when bedtime came that she fell asleep
directly her head touched the pillow, and she slumbered dreamlessly
until morning. It was early when she woke, and sitting up in bed she
thought of all the things that were before her in the day. She wondered
what she would say to her father, and whether she ought to tell him of
the arrangement the Head had made with her. It did not seem fair that he
should have to face a situation of such gravity without some
preparation.
“I can’t tell him! Oh, I can’t tell him!” she murmured distressfully,
and then, because lying still and thinking about it was so intolerable,
she sprang out of bed, beginning to dress with feverish haste. It was
such a comfort to pitch straight into work, and to lose sight for a
little while of the things which bothered her so badly.
The whole of the Sixth were to work at term finals from eleven o’clock
until one that day, and they set off down to the beach at half-past
nine, to bathe and get back for a little rest before the time for the
exam. The Fourth Form girls had already gone down; the Fifth were
sitting for their finals, and would go to bathe when their work was
done.
As the group of girls with Miss Groome turned out of the school gates,
they met Dr. Sedgewick coming in. Dorothy’s heart gave a great bound
when she saw him, for he looked so tired and so very careworn.
Miss Groome stayed with her to speak to him, while the rest of the girls
went on.
“I have not come to see you at this moment, Dorothy,” he said, with his
hand on her shoulder, while his gaze travelled over her with great
content. “Your Head has sent a message asking to see me, and I am going
to her now. If you are back from the beach in good time, I may have a
few minutes with you; and then later in the day, when your finals are
over, we will have a great time together, and a regular pow-wow. You are
looking fine; it is evident that work agrees with you.”
“Dorothy is a very good worker,” said Miss Groome graciously; and then
she hurried on with Dorothy, to catch up with the girls who were in
front, while Dr. Sedgewick walked on to the hall door for his interview
with the Head.