"Will you stay right here like a decent chap and not get into any more mischief until I get back?"
"Where are you going?"
"Nowhere much--just across the campus for a little while. I"ll be back soon. Will you wait here exactly where you are?"
"Yes, but--"
"Honor bright?"
"Sure!"
"All right. Don"t quit this room until I come. So long!"
Bob was gone.
Van lay very still after the door had closed, and to keep him company in his solitude back swarmed all those dreary thoughts that Bob"s cheery presence had for the time being banished; with a rush they came to jeer, taunt, and terrify.
The _little while_ lengthened into an hour and on into a second one.
The room became intolerable.
Then upon the stone floor of the corridor outside sounded Bob"s foot.
"Still here, Van?" he cried, coming in with elastic step and banging the door after him.
His face was wreathed in smiles.
"What"s happened to you that you look like that?" questioned Van, sitting up among the pillows.
"Like what?"
"Why, as if somebody had sent you a Christmas-tree or made you president of a railroad?"
Bob laughed.
"I"ve been to see the Head," he said.
"Humph! I never knew of his causing any one such overwhelming delight," observed Van a little spitefully.
"Hush up, old man; don"t run down the Doctor," Bob said. "You may have more cause to be grateful to him than you know."
"You don"t mean--" Van"s voice trembled. "Did you go to see him about me?"
Bob nodded.
"Bob! How did you dare?"
"I dare do anything that becomes a man; who dares do more is none,"
quoted Bob merrily. "I don"t believe, though, I"d have dared go for myself," he answered. "It is different when you are doing it for some one else. Now sit up and listen and I"ll tell you all about it.
The Doctor was mighty white about you; but in spite of all he stuck to the fact that you"d disobeyed the rules; he kept going back to that every time I tried to switch him off. We squabbled over you a solid hour, and the upshot of it was this: you are to stay at Colversham--"
"Hurrah!"
Van hurled a pillow into the air.
"Shut up and hear the rest of it. You are to stay here because I promised upon my word of honor that you would keep straight and study."
"I"ll do it."
"That isn"t all."
Bob hesitated.
It was a wrench for him to deliver the remainder of the message.
"Yes, you are to stay," he repeated as if to gain time. "But of course you can"t expect to slip through with no punishment at all."
"No, indeed!"
Still Van spoke with jaunty hopefulness.
"The Doctor thinks it is only fair that you should be pretty severely reminded of what you"ve done."
"That"s all right. I"m not afraid. Fire ahead! What"s he going to do with me?"
"He thinks--he says--he feels it is best--"
"Oh, come on, come on--out with it!"
"He has forbidden you to take any part in the school athletics this spring," was the reluctant whisper.
Van did not speak.
"I"m mighty sorry, old fellow," declared Bob, "but it was the best I could do."
Still Van made no reply.
With troubled gaze Bob regarded his chum.
"I"d far rather Maitland had knocked me out," he ventured at last.
Stooping, he put his hand on Van"s shoulder.
Van roused himself and looked up into his friend"s face with one of his quick smiles.
"It"s all right, Bob," he said. "Don"t you fuss about me any more.
You were a trump to get me off as well as you did. I"ll take my medicine without whimpering. I ought to bless my stars that my banishment from athletics is only temporary. Suppose I had been smashed up so I could never play another game like that little kid, Tim McGrew," he shuddered. "It was just sheer luck that saved me.
Why, do you suppose, he should have been the one to be crippled and I go scot free?" he observed meditatively.