CHAPTER XXIVTHE 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 appearedon 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.”