Follow My leader Part 31

"Doubt it. But we might try when you're in. Ta, ta! old man. Mum's the word."

d.i.c.k spent a troubled week. He was uncomfortable with Heathcote, in whom he was bursting to confide. He was uneasy, too, in meeting the few members of the "Sociables" whom he knew, and felt that they were watching him critically, with a view to the election next Thursday. And he was vindictive in the presence of Culver, whose possible rivalry he regarded as little short of an insult.

Indeed, the effect of the suspense on him was bad all round. For having somehow picked up the notion from Braider's hints that "spirit" was a leading qualification for aspiring members of the club, he was very nearly increasing that qualification notoriously, before the week was out, by another row with headquarters.

He purposely shirked his work, and behaved disorderly in cla.s.s, in order to show his patrons what he was made of; and what was worse, he egged the unsuspecting Georgie on to similar excesses by his example.

Georgie, as far as "spirit" went, stood better qualified for membership of the club at the week's end than did the real candidate; for while the latter escaped punishment, the former was dropped upon to the tune of three hundred lines of Virgil, for throwing a book across the room during cla.s.s.

"Just my luck," said he defiantly to his leader afterwards.

"Everybody's down on me. I'm bound to catch it, so I may as well have my fling."

"You did have your fling, Georgie, and you caught it, too."

Georgie was too out of humour to notice the jest. "You don't catch me caring twopence about it, though," said he.

But his tones belied the valiant words, and d.i.c.k looked curiously at his troubled, harried face.

"Why, Georgie," said he, "you're down on your luck, old man."

"Blow my luck!" said Georgie, "perhaps I am down on it. It serves me worse than yours."

d.i.c.k didn't say anything more just then. Perhaps because he had nothing to say. But he didn't like this new state of things in his friend.

Georgie was being spoiled, and would have to be looked after.

d.i.c.k was not the only Templetonian who had made this brilliant discovery. Ponty had dropped a casual eye on him now and then, so had Mansfield; and neither the captain that was, nor the captain that was to be, liked the look of things.

"He's going the way of all--all the Pledgelings," said Ponty. "Can't you stop it, Mansfield?"

"If I were captain of Templeton, I'd try, old man," replied the other.

"Really, Mansfield, you frighten me when you look so solemn. What can I do?"

"Do? Take him away from where he is, to begin with."

"On what grounds? Pledge hasn't done anything you or I could take hold of. And if the kid is going to the dogs, we can't connect it with Pledge, any more than we can with Winter himself."

And Ponty yawned, and wished Mansfield would not look as if somebody wanted hanging.

"It's curious, at any rate," said Mansfield, "that Pledge's f.a.g should begin to go to the dogs, while his chum, who f.a.gs for Cresswell, and is quite as racketty, should keep all right."

"Do you call young Richardson all right?" asked Ponty. "I should say he and his friend are in the same boat, and he's holding the tiller."

Which was pretty 'cute for a lazy one like Ponty.

"Well," said Mansfield, who, with all his earnestness, felt really baffled over the problem, "things mustn't go on as they are, surely."

"Certainly not, dear boy, if we can make them better; but I don't see what's to be done. I'd bless you if you could put things right."

And he put his feet upon the chair in front, and took up his novel.

Mansfield took the hint. Nor did he misunderstand his indolent friend.

Ponty's indolence wasn't all laziness. It was sometimes a cloak for perplexity; and the captain-to-be, as he said good-night, guessed shrewdly that not many pages of the novel would be skimmed that evening.

Ponty did, in fact, wake up a bit those last few weeks of the term. He rambled down once or twice to the Juniors' tennis court, and terrified the small fry there by sprawling at full length on the gra.s.s within sight of the play. It was a crowded corner of the fields and a noisy one, and, if the captain went there for a nap, he had queer notions of a snug berth. If, however, he went there to see life, he knew what he was about.

He saw Aspinall there, toughening every day, and working up his screwy service patiently and doggedly, till one or two of the knowing ones found it worth their while to get on the other side of the net and play against him. Culver was there, big of bone, bragging, bl.u.s.tering as ever, but keeping the colour in his cheeks with healthy sport. Gosse was there, forgetting to make himself a nuisance for one hour in twenty- four. The globular Cazenove was there, melting with the heat, but proclaiming that even a big body and short legs can do some good by help of a true eye and a patient spirit. These and twenty others were there, getting good every one of them, and atoning, every time they scored a point and hit out a rally, for something less healthy or less profitable scored elsewhere. And Ponty, as he lay there blinking in the sun, moralised on the matter, and came to the conclusion that there is hope for a boy as long as he loves to don his flannels and roll up his shirt- sleeves, and stand up, with his head in the air, to face his rival like a man. Even a Culver may look a gentleman as he rushes down to his corner and saves his match with a left-hander, and Aspinall himself may appear formidable when, as he stands up to serve, his foeman pulls his cap down and retreats with lengthened face across the service-line.

But where were d.i.c.k and Heathcote? For a whole week Ponty took his siesta in the Juniors' corner, blinking now at the cricket, now at the tennis, strolling sometimes into the gymnasium, and sometimes to the fives courts, but nowhere did Basil the son of Richard meet his eyes, and nowhere was Heathcote the Pledgeling.

One day he did find the latter wandering like a ghost in the Quadrangle, and saw him bolt like a rat to his hole at sight of a monitor; and once he saw d.i.c.k striding at the head of a phalanx of Juniors, with his coat off and his face very much on one side, and the marks of battle on his eye and lip. Ponty sheered off before the triumphal army reached him and shrugged his shoulders.

That afternoon he encountered our heroes arm-in-arm in the Quadrangle and hailed them. They obeyed his summons uneasily.

"Go and put on your flannels, both of you," said the captain, "and come back here; I'll wait for you."

In trepidation they obeyed and went, while Ponty looked about for a cozy seat on which to stretch himself.

In five minutes they returned and presented themselves. Ponty eyed them both calmly, and then roused himself and began to walk to the fields.

Tennis was in full swing in the Junior corner, where all sorts of play, good, bad and indifferent, was going on at the nets. Ponty, followed by the two bewildered champions, strolled about till he came upon an indifferent set being played by Gosse and Cazenove against Raggles and another boy called Wade.

"Stop the game for a bit, you youngsters," said the captain. "Which two of you are the best?"

"I think I and Raggles are," said Gosse, with his usual modesty.

"Oh, then you can sit out. Give your rackets to these two; they're going to play against Cazenove and Wade."

d.i.c.k's heart sank within him as he took Gosse's racket and glanced up at the captain's face.

"I'm rather out of practice," faltered he.

"Come, are you ready? I'll umpire," said the captain.

It was a melancholy exhibition, that scratch match; all the more melancholy that the other courts gradually emptied and a ring of Juniors formed, who stared silently now at the players, then round at Pontifex, and wondered what on earth he found to interest him in a miserable show like this. For our heroes mulled everything. Two faults were not enough for them; the holes in their rackets were legion, and their legs never went the way they wanted. The Den blushed as it looked on and heard Ponty call, game after game, "Love--forty."

Of course the two wretched boys were scared--Ponty knew that well enough--but so were Cazenove and Wade. And yet Cazenove and Wade managed to keep their wind and get over their net, and no one could say they had less to be scared at than their opponents.

At length the doleful spectacle was over. "One--six" was the score in games.

"You must be proud of your one game," said Ponty, strolling off.

Our heroes watched him go, and felt they were hard hit. It was no use pretending not to understand the captain's meaning, or not to notice the still lingering blushes of the spectators on their account.

So they withdrew sadly from the field of battle, chastened in spirit, yet not without a dawning ambition to make Ponty change his mind concerning them before the term was quite run out.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN.