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I’m sorry I made a mess of it—as usual.” “Oh, cheer up; it’s not going to do you any harm with the fellows. A little momentary flash from Westby and Morrill—” “No, I wasn’t thinking of myself.” “You weren’t!” The bluntness of Barclay’s exclamation of astonishment caused Irving to blush, and Barclay himself, realizing what he had betrayed to Irving’s perception, looked embarrassed.
From that point on it became a close and interesting race, yet every now and then Irving’s eyes strayed to the small figure toiling farther and farther to the rear—but always toiling.
It was most noticeable at Irving’s table; there his bubbling spirits seemed permanently to have subsided; he wrapped himself in silence and gloom. His manner towards Irving was that of haughty displeasure. Carroll was at a loss to understand it and questioned him about it one day. “Oh, I’m just tired of him—tired of hearing his everlasting brag about his brother,” Westby said sharply.
This with some bitterness, as news had arrived that Irving’s voice had given out the night before, and he had been replaced by his half-baked son in the title rôle, a change hardly calculated to increase either the box-office receipts or the success of the new drama.
“Time is up,” said Irving, closing his watch. “But what is time when justice trembles in the balance?” argued Westby. “When the innocent is in danger of being punished for the guilty, when—” “Westby, please climb that ladder at once.” “So young and so inexorable!” murmured Westby, setting his foot upon the ladder. Irving’s face was red; the tittering of the audience was making him angry.
Stop that!” Irving’s voice was shrill with anger. Allison became stationary once more, and Westby displayed an innocent, surprised face at the loft opening. “If there is any more nonsense in letting Allison down, I shall really have to report you.” Irving’s voice rose tremulously to a high key; he was trying hard to control it.
The rest of you will solve at your seats this problem.” He mounted to the blackboard himself and wrote out the question. While he had his back turned, he heard some whispering; he looked over his shoulder. Westby was lingering in his seat and had obviously been holding communication with his neighbor. “Westby,”—Irving’s voice was sharp,—“were you trying to get help at the last moment?”
On rainy afternoons there was apt to be some noise and disorder—usually there was what was termed an “Allison hunt,” which took various forms, but which, whether resulting in the dismemberment of the boy’s room or the pursuit and battery of him with pillows along the corridors, invariably required Irving’s interference to quell it.
And Lawrence forgot Irving’s irritations in gratitude to him for his help. “It must be a trial to teach such a numskull,” Lawrence thought; and at the end of one particularly hard day he undertook to console his brother by saying, “Never mind, Irv; it won’t be long now before you have pupils who aren’t country bumpkins and don’t need to have things pounded into their heads with an axe.”
He flung himself around, trying to escape from Collingwood’s clutch, and saw Irving. The smile faded from Irving’s face; Westby looked at him sullenly for a moment, then broke away and made a rush up the stairs. For two or three days the intercourse between Irving and Westby was of the most formal sort.
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