The Spirit of the Leader/Chapter 1
NAMES are peculiar things. Sometimes they fit—sometimes they do not. Sight unseen, one would have suspected that George Praska would be given to turning things over slowly in his mind, seriously and deliberately; a short, stocky youth with something about him of the football build. The speculator would have been right. George's mental processes were dogged, not brilliant. For two years he had played right guard for Northfield High School. Opposing elevens had found him a massive rock that could neither be pushed back nor flanked. Coaches sent their teams out with instructions to "let that Praska alone. It's only wasting a down."
Perry King, on the other hand, belied the promise of his name. By all the pictures that names suggest he should have been tall, fair-haired, dashing and magnetic. Instead he was thin and dark and funereal of aspect, an ungainly boy running mostly to gangling shanks and given to unexpected, impish outbursts of mischief.
And yet, the two were friends, drawn together by their very contrasts. To George, slow of speech, Perry's wit and flippant tongue were qualities as baffling as they were sometimes alluring. To scrawny Perry, George's solid strength was something to be worshipped as personally unattainable. Perry referred to the football guard as "the Northfield ox." George called Perry "the human string-bean." They got along famously, as opposites sometimes do.
That summer carpenters and plasterers entered the high school, and did not leave until the week before school opened. Perry, who had gone off to a camp immediately after the June examinations, came back to find an added story on the school building.
"What's the idea?" he asked George Praska. "Town been growing while I've been away?"
George gave a slow smile. The thought of rapid growth for Northfield impressed him as a fine example of Perry's humor. "Home rooms," he said.
Now Perry knew something about the home room idea in high schools; but on the moment his impish brain set out upon mischief. Into his face came a well-acted look of incredulity.
"What?" he demanded. "Home runs? How can they teach that in school? Of course, we could stand some home runs. Last spring's nine was awful. But who's going to hit them? How can you teach home run hitting?"
Praska looked at him doubtfully.
"Well, who is?" Perry demanded again. "The nine didn't hit a single home run last season."
George assumed that Perry had made an honest mistake.
"Home r-o-o-m-s," he said patiently. "Everybody in school will be assigned to a room. It will be his room until his days in the school are over. Each room will have something of the motto of the Three Musketeers: 'All for one and one for all.' Every fellow will have to be true to his room, and do things for it, and fight for it"
Perry's look was appealingly innocent. "Where?"
"Where what?"
"Where will the fights be held? In the gym?"
"Fights?" All at once a dry smile wrote itself unwillingly across the football guard's lips. "Up to your old tricks. Don't you ever take anything seriously? That home room plan is going to be a big thing. You'll like it."
Perry yawned. "I hope so. I've always had an idea that some day I'd find something I could like at Northfield. How's football going to run this fall?"
"We'll be there with a team," Praska said calmly. "But we've got to elect a new manager."
"What happened to Crandall?" Perry demanded.
"Family moved away. Things will be a bit unsettled, I guess, until the new manager is elected."
"When will that be, George?"
"Oh, about a week after school opens."
"Any—any candidates?"
"Not yet."
"Well—" They had been walking and had come to a corner where their ways parted. "You just tell 'em, George, that I'm ready to start managing any time they say the word."
Praska, after a moment, began to laugh. "More of your jokes," he said. "Only I know you so well, you old string-bean, I'd have thought you meant it. Good-night!"
Perry had meant it. All his life he had worshipped strength and brawn as only the thin weakling can. Football, baseball, and basket ball players had been his heroes and his earthly gods.
The first year at Northfield he had turned out for all three sports. Baseball and basketball had given him the routine of a trial; football had not even considered him. The second year he had merely played the part of a loyal rooter. He had studied football rules in the hope that it might be his good fortune to invent a play that would save the bitter end of some disastrous season. He had learned to box-score a ball game in the hope that the gods might smile on him and lead him to the throne of Official Scorer. In his infatuation with all that stood for speed and stamina, skill and endurance, he had called himself blessed if he could be linesman or foul chaser, guardian of an honored sweater or custodian of the water bucket.
And now the place of manager of the eleven was open! Last fall, when Crandall had been selected, Perry was a sophomore and had not given the place a thought. By custom the manager's berth always went to a junior or senior. But now he was eligible—he who had followed the team through two seasons without missing a game; he who had carted sweaters, minded watches and rings, and sat loyally and dutifully through the halves come wind, or rain, or snow.
His heart gave a queer sort of flutter. Hunger for the associations the manager's place would give him caused him to feel a choking in the throat. After a time he tried to analyze his chances calmly. His record as a rooter was good. He could count on Praska because—because. He paused right there; the flutter in his heart suddenly turned to pain. Praska had laughed at him.
He tried to tell himself that the football guard had not understood. When Praska, really knew. He swallowed a lump in his throat. Nobody had taken him seriously when he had turned out as a football candidate. Nobody had taken him very seriously when he had answered the call for baseball and basketball candidates. It might be, he thought in fright, that nobody would take him seriously even now.
It did not dawn upon him that he himself had created this atmosphere of foolery so fatal to his own consideration. He had elected to play the uproarious joker; and the school had come to accept him at his own valuation. Now, all at once, he began to fear to tell members of the eleven of his candidacy. And the thing he feared was something he had been courting through two years at Northfield High—laughter.
When school opened he came back to his studies wearing the old air of mockery. But now it was a mask to hide a hurt.
The morning was given over to getting the school settled to a new routine. For the first period of the afternoon Perry was booked for English V. He went there directly from the school cafeteria in the basement. A group of boys stood near the windows discussing home rooms. A sudden imp of perversity moved him to make sport of what all Northfield was taking soberly.
"Did you hear the big things they're going to do?" he asked casually.
He had their interest on the instant. And yet, with true dramatic instinct, he held them on the hooks of suspense. He brushed a crumb from his coat; he whistled a snatch of song; he began to study a paper he took from his pocket.
"Well, what's the big news?" a voice asked impatiently.
"Oh!" Perry folded the paper and put it away. "I thought perhaps you knew. Each room will be a club. We'll give dances, and tournaments, and—and have a clam-bake in the spring."
Mr. Quirk, who taught English V, came down between two aisles of desks to discover the cause of the commotion that seemed to revolve around a six-foot boy who stood importantly in its midst.
"Perry's been telling us about the home room plans," said a voice; "about the dances, and the tournaments and the clam-bakes."
"And what?" the teacher asked.
"Clam-bakes, sir."
"King said that?" Mr. Quirk seemed struggling with something that became a queer sort of strangling cough. "So King said" Again he was seized with that strange attack and went up the room to his desk holding a handkerchief to his face.
"English teachers," Perry said in a guarded voice, "get that way sometimes. It's a disease of the vocal cords from—from practicing too much reading. It's very hard on them."
Perry's conception of the home room swept joyously through the school. All that afternoon as classes gathered for periods it was the rosy topic of conversation. Perry, chuckling, told himself that he had originated just about the greatest hoax ever.
But the deception was short-lived. The hall bell, instead of ringing for the last period of the day, clanged the brassy summons that meant special assembly. The corridors grew noisy with the shuffling of feet as the school moved toward the auditorium. The orchestra, brought together for the first time since June, was conscious of the vacant places due to graduation and played a ragged and terrifying march.
"I have called you together to-day," Mr. Rue, the principal, said in his slow, exact way, "to tell you something of the home room plan that is to be used in this school."
Perry looked concerned. He had not expected that his bubble would burst so soon.
"Every student," the principal was saying, "will be assigned to a home room. That will be the student's home room as long as he remains in the school. The student will report there, go there for study periods and make it, in short, his school home. He will give to the room his loyalty, and the room will give him, in return, its consolidated strength. Each room will have a teacher assigned to it, and that teacher will be leader and helper, advisor and companion, captain and friend, to every student in his room. Alphabetical lists have been posted on the bulletin boards. Every student's name has been listed with the room to which he has been assigned."
Something told Perry that boys were staring at him and expressing a whispered and indignant condemnation. The orchestra struck up its ragged march, and Perry lounged out with the tide. In the hall a hand caught his arm.
"Clam-bakes!" a voice said witheringly. "What were you doing, having a good time with us, you match stick?"
"Did you take that stuff seriously?" Perry asked with an air of innocence. He smiled at them raptly. "If the Board of Health had not decided that typhoid germs are sometimes found in clams and oysters"
Somebody gave a laugh of resignation. "There's no stopping you, Perry, is there? Put it over on us again. Our fault for paying any attention to you. Come on, fellows; let's get at that home room list."
There was a movement toward the stairs. Perry, grinning, suddenly found himself beside George Praska. The football guard's face was grave.
"You shouldn't have done that, Perry."
Perry bristled at the criticism. "Why not? What harm did it do?"
"I—I don't know as I can put it into words," Praska said hesitatingly. "This home room plan is good. When you make fun of it, you weaken it. Sometimes, in politics, good men are beaten because unscrupulous opponents turn a laugh on them and then keep pounding away at that until the good candidate looks ridiculous. That's bad citizenship for everybody. It's bad citizenship here in the school to get people laughing at the home room. You see that, don't you?"
"I don't see as a laugh hurts anybody," Perry defended.
"But if it weakens something good, something that might be a stimulus"
"Where do you get that citizenship stuff?" Perry interrupted suspiciously. "From Mr. Banning?"
Praska nodded.
"Oh, that man." Perry snapped his fingers. "He's a pest. If he had only five minutes to live he'd say 'For five minutes we will consider the part that arbitration has played in American politics'."
Perry's voice was a faithful reproduction of the civics teacher's dry tones. Praska laughed and gave up the argument, and together they went down the stairs.
"I hope we're in the same room," said Perry.
They found, after pushing their way through the crowd that surrounded the bulletin board, that they were to be together in Room 13—and that Mr. Banning was to be the leader of the room. Perry gave a grunt of annoyance, and then became absorbed in something else. Carefully he checked through the names. Nine of the football squad were in his room.
"I guess," he said with a quick look at the guard, "that Room 13 will be able to select one of its own crowd for football manager."
Praska nodded. "If they want to," he said. Perry walked home wondering what that meant.
Students were distributing circulars as he entered the school the next morning. He read the one that was handed to him:
Are you a candidate?
The football squad decided yesterday to ask every student who believes that he could act as manager of the football team to file his own nomination. No student should feel self-conscious about asking for the place if he thinks he can fill it. If you are a candidate tell any member of the team that you would like to be considered.
This circular is distributed by
"The Northfield Breeze"
If you want to keep up with the news of your school read your school newspaper. Published thirty-five times during the school year.
5c per copy.$1.50 per year.
"Anybody seen Praska?" he demanded hurriedly.
"Just went upstairs," said a voice.
Perry's long, thin legs took the stairs two at a time. On the second floor he overtook the football guard walking toward Room 13.
"George! Wait a minute. Did you know yesterday about this circular?"
"The whole squad knew about it."
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"We had promised the Breeze. They wanted to catch the school by surprise with a real piece of news—use it to impress the freshmen and get subscriptions."
"Well" All at once Perry found his throat gone dry. "I'm a candidate," he said. He meant it to be casual and matter-of-fact. It sounded defiant.
Praska made a noise with his lips. It might have been a subdued whistle of surprise. He kept staring down the corridor, now and then stepping out of the way of hurrying students with a sort of absent-mindedness.
"It's about time to report," he said at last.
Perry caught his arm. "I can count on you, can't I?"
"I—I don't know," the football guard said slowly and uncomfortably. "You're such a queer eel. You might take it into your head that managing the team was some sort of comedy. We've got to do what's best for the team, and you may not be the best. And then there's Room 13. If the manager comes from our room he'll give the room a black eye if he doesn't stand right up to his job. It's like electing somebody to public office just because he's a good fellow. Mr. Banning says that when you do that you usually get a good fellow who isn't up to being a good official."
Perry dropped his arm. "I thought you were a friend of mine," he said bitterly.
"I am." Praska was genuinely distressed. "If you didn't do so many fool things— I've got to think about the team, and Room 13, andOh, darn it, Perry, if I could only be sure of you."
Perry turned from him and walked away.
Mr. Banning was tall and spare, with hollows in his cheeks and along his neck behind his ears. His frame did not fit well into clothes—there were too many sharp corners to his being. His coat hung baggily from his shoulders; his trousers had a habit of bunching at the bottom where their legs came in contact with his shoes. But looking at his face you forgot his clothes. In his eyes was something that held you. In them was the fire, the vision, the enthusiasm of the dreamer.
There was a rapt look in his eyes this morning. Room 13 was finding that instead of being simply a school room it was a community. Young citizens of the future were having their first taste of participating in their own government. When the idea of the home room had been broached among the teachers, Mr. Banning had been quick to support the plan. He saw in it a chance to make the high school students feel that they were, in fact as well as name, citizens of the American commonwealth.
And so, when Room 13 had filled that morning, he had tried to overcome the strangeness that usually sits on boys face to face with a new venture. He had told them that, in so far as was possible, they themselves were going to be the rulers of the room deciding its policies and determining its judgments.
"I'll just be the umpire," he said. "I will never interfere unless I am compelled to. When an American citizen gets into trouble away from home his first thought is to appeal to his Government at Washington for help and protection. I want you to carry that same feeling with respect to Room 13. If you get into trouble in school, bring that trouble here. If you're right, the whole room will be behind you; if you're wrong, your friends here will tell you so and counsel as to what you had better do to make amends. Sometimes you may have to take punishment. If you do it will be because your own room thinks you deserve punishment, just as the various States regretfully punish those citizens who break the law. When people rule themselves wisely they have law and order. When law and order are absent the result is anarchy. Here in Northfield High, in Room 13, and in every other home room, we are going to try to be good citizens of our school republic."
The room talked over its problems with sudden seriousness. There was, first of all, the question of the attendance book. Somebody had to be appointed to mark the time when the citizens of Room 13 reported each morning and afternoon.
"I wonder," said Mr. Banning, "if we want just that? The United States passes laws and so do the several States. But they do not keep count on us individually to see that we obey. They presume that good citizens will obey. If there might be some method by which each student would take the responsibility of reporting his own time." The teacher looked about the room.
"Why," George Praska asked slowly, "why can't each fellow sign his own time as he comes in? It's up to him to be square about it."
They settled it in that way; and Mr. Banning, who had been hoping that they would rise to the occasion of responsibility, felt his spirits soar. What a fine understanding they had brought to Room 13! And then a cloud appeared upon his sky. Back toward the rear of the room a thin boy sprawled in a seat with dejection, bitterness and resentment written in every line of his face.
The hall bells rang for the start of a period. As Room 13 began to empty itself, Mr. Banning walked down toward the door. He was there when the thin boy approached.
"Anything wrong, Perry?" he asked.
Perry shook his head.
"What do you think of our room?"
Perry's rancor found expression in words "The room's all right," he said, "but the crowd in it gives me a pain."
A moment later, out in the hall on his way to a period of French, he was sorry that he had let his tongue run unchecked. It had been, at best, an ungracious reply to a friendly question. But gall and wormwood were thick on his lips. Mr. Banning had spoken of the way the room would stand together; and yet, with a majority of the football squad on its roll, the room was shying away from his candidacy. And he wanted so much to feel that he was part of the athletic life of Northfield!
If you're right, Mr. Banning had said, the whole room will be behind you. If you're wrongPerry didn't finish that thought.
"It's just talk," he told himself angrily. "They won't make a fool of me."
And so, between classes and also during the period in the school lunch room at noon, he ridiculed and hooted the home room plan. In every school there are those who are more or less at outs with the rules and who hinder rather than help; around him Perry drew all these unworthy malcontents. All at once, conscious of the exclusive character of his audience, he dropped his tirade. He had not bargained to become a leader of bad eggs. Fate, he told himself as he left the lunch room, was playing him some shabby and diabolical tricks when the fellows he admired most would have none of him and those that the school viewed as trouble-makers accepted him as a prophet.
George Praska, already arrived in Room 13, called to him a greeting as he entered. Had George appeared to be at all uncomfortable Perry might have experienced a soothing sense of compensation. But the football guard's unchanged friendliness stung. To Perry it was a sign that Praska viewed lightly the happenings of the morning. Scorn he could have met with scorn; but indifference from one he had rated as his friend rankled.
And then came a reckless desire to show them all that he did not care a fig for their opinions. A fresh attendance sheet was on Mr. Banning's desk. There were the A. M. and the P. M. columns. He found his name, moved his pencil out to the afternoon file and wrote:
25c-2-1
The next boy to go up to the desk to register stared, looked down the room at Perry, and stared again. Perry chuckled. Then Hammond, the quarterback, saw it, and called Praska and Littlefield, the right end. This time Perry looked down at the floor. After a while he saw them move away from the book, walk over to one of the windows, and stand there talking. Once more that day he had acted on impulse, and once more he was sorry. He squirmed in his seat, and would have given much to have known what the three football players were talking about.
It was Littlefield who finally came toward him. "What does that funny stuff on the sheet mean?" he asked.
"Twenty-five cents is a quarter," Perry said gruffly. "It's simple. Quarter to one."
"I see," Littlefield said gravely, and went back and joined the others.
On the way out of the room, for the first period of the afternoon, Perry overtook Praska.
"Did you tell them?" he demanded. He despised himself for asking the question, but something within him would not let him rest until he knew.
"I told them during lunch hour," the guard answered.
They went down the hall together. Apparently, to Praska, there was nothing more to tell. Perry bit his lips.
"What—what did they say?"
Praska's answer was cryptic. "Why did you write that fool thing on the attendance sheet?"
Perry had written his cabalistic sign to show that he cared naught for public opinion in his home room, yet— During the first period his thoughts were far removed from algebra; luckily, he was not called upon. With algebra out of the way came a study period, and he went back to Room 13. The place was silent save for the occasional scratch of a pen or rustle of a page. It bore every evidence of having something to do and being busily engaged with doing it.
Perry got his long body settled into a seat. Mr. Banning gave a seemingly absent glance and went back to some work he was doing. There was work awaiting Perry too; but with his chin cupped in a thin, bony hand he stared at the desk. Boys came in and took places around him, but he did not lift his eyes. Why had he written that fool thing? Praska's question could mean only that by that silly act he had weakened whatever chance he had had.
"Perry!"
He raised his head dully.
"Perry King."
Mr. Banning was calling. He roused himself and went up to the teacher's desk. He saw Littlefield's eyes leave a book and frowningly watch his journey. At that his own eyes became sullen. He had no doubt what the subject of the interview would be. If Littlefield expected to sit there and gloat at the sight of him offering apology and excuse to Mr. Banning, then Littlefield was doomed to disappointment.
But Mr. Banning's smile was warm. He motioned to a chair drawn close to his own.
"We'll have to keep our voices down," he said, "so as not to disturb the others. I want to talk to a number of the fellows—personally—you among them. Later, each home room is to elect delegates to a central body that will be a sort of school Congress. Some one of these home rooms, as time runs along, is going to develop students with the powers of leadership. That home room is going to become the leading home room. It is going to write its influence into every classroom, every organization, every team in Northfield. We want Room 13 to be that leader. That's the reason why I want to talk to you and some of the others who are going to be the leaders of the room."
Perry sat there in the grip of numbing amazement. To be called in conference as a leader. His body stiffened. He kept his position in the chair, very still and very straight, as though surprise and wonderment had frozen him to a rigidity of shocked incredulity.
"I wanted a few words with you, Perry, about leadership. Our leaders in the State Capitol and at Washington are not accidents. They have achieved because they have done definite things; task by task, effort by effort, step by step, they have gone ahead and have grown in reputation. Any man can do to-day what should have been done yesterday. The leader wins his place because he can see ahead, to-morrow from to-day. Lincoln, for instance. He became a leader because he was one of the first to see and to proclaim that this Nation could not continue to exist half slave and half free. You can understand that, Perry?"
Perry nodded. And still he sat in that attitude of frozen astonishment.
"Leadership," Mr. Banning went on, "is wisdom. It carefully considers what it is about to do and sees clearly what result will follow. Most people do things on the spur of the moment without due thought. That's the reason there are so few persons fit to lead. There is one thing that Room 13 must never do—it must never go off half cocked. Often mistakes, once made, can never be remedied. Sometimes they can be retrieved. The true leader always knows when to admit he has been wrong. That's all, Perry. You'll remember it, won't you?"
"Yes, sir," said Perry, and arose from the chair and started back toward his desk. Sometimes mistakes can be retrieved! The words kept echoing in his mind. Sometimes. Abruptly he turned about and went back to Mr. Banning's desk.
The attendance sheet lay where it had been left early in the afternoon. The teacher of civics, reading a book and marking it, did not look up to see what Perry might be doing. The boy found a rubber in his pocket. With his long, thin body draped ungracefully over the desk he erased the thing he had written that afternoon and in its place put a matter-of-fact "12:45." Still Mr. Banning did not look up from his book.
With eyes lowered Perry returned to his desk. Had his head been lifted he would have seen Littlefield looking after him at first with a frown and then with a quiet smile. And had he looked back he would have seen that Mr. Banning was covertly surveying him over the top of the book.
More than once, that night, Perry's cheeks flushed at the memory of practical jokes with which he had hocus-pocused the school. At the time he had viewed these deceptions as mere fun; now they taunted him with the fact that they had written his reputation as a trickster. He had let his prankish moods sway him, and had not looked ahead. No wonder the football crowd, seeking to select a leader, passed him by with slight consideration!
He had been bitter at Praska, but that was passing. Praska had been looking ahead. The football guard had been thinking of something bigger than merely pleasing a friend. Secretly Perry had often viewed himself as a brainier chap than the plodding guard; he had even been a little contemptuous as those of his character are apt to be. Now in his chastened mood, he saw that Praska's slow mind moved irresistibly to logical conclusions. Praska was a thinker. Perry felt cheap and insignificant.
However, an awakening was upon him. Mr. Banning, during that short talk in the home room, had opened his mind to many things. Whether or not he was to become a leader of Room 13, it came to him that he owed it to himself, to his school, to be something more than a humbugging jester. His dream of the managership of the football team was gone. He put it from him with a sigh. In the void it left came a resolution to play a part that never again would cause any one to distrust his capabilities because of foolish things he had done.
There had been an understanding in Northfield that the football team would announce the selection of its manager next morning. But no notice appeared on the bulletin boards as the home rooms gathered and no information was given out as the day wore on. Twice that afternoon, in Room 13, Perry saw Praska and Littlefield studying him and trying to hide their scrutiny. What they might think of him now had ceased to vex him.
After classes he came back to Room 13 to get a notebook. The Dramatic Club had the use of the auditorium for a tryout of candidates for the Christmas play; as he came from the room, a group of the club members were on their way to the stairs.
"Something's going on in the football squad," one of the crowd said wisely. "I heard that they were holding up the ballot and keeping an eye on one of the candidates. Wonder who it can be?"
Perry wondered too—and felt a shaft of envy for the lucky fellow who still had a chance.
That evening, on the street, he met Praska. The friendly greeting he had resented in Room 13 now warmed him. They spoke of many things, but all the while the football guard seemed turning something in his mind in his slow way. Suddenly:
"Did Mr. Banning ask you to change that attendance sheet?"
"No," said Perry.
Praska fell into a silence. Somehow Perry got the idea that, if he spoke again, his words would hold something of moment. And at last he spoke.
"I—I'd watch my step for—the next few days."
Just that—nothing more. Perry was disappointed. Their ways parted. Something that Mr. Banning had said had started Perry on another line of thought and he wanted Ida Tarbell's "Lincoln." He was coming out of the public library, with the book under one arm, when a phrase of Praska's came back to him. For the next few days! He stumbled down the library steps, unconsciously hugging the book, lost for the moment to all else but a great and surging hope. For now he knew the truth. He was the fellow the football squad was considering.
It was hours after he went to bed that night before he fell asleep. His ambitions, called back to life, painted a riotous succession of pleasing pictures. He saw himself as one of the football squad, traveling to games in their bus, a locker-room companion of all who wore the moleskin, sitting in by right at their most sacred conferences. His soul thrilled. Watch his step? He'd watch it as step was never watched before.
The morning sent him to Northfield High with a buoyant step. But the day was to bring disaster, black and overwhelming. Passing out of Room 13 for the first period, in some unaccountable way he slipped and fell. Instinctively, as he lost his balance, he caught the boy next to him. That boy caught at another. Five of them sprawled in undignified disorder just outside the door.
"What's going on here?" Mr. Banning called.
"I slipped, sir," Perry answered. He found some of the students treating the affair as a prank. "I slipped," he said sharply to those around him.
An hour later, during English V, Mr. Quirk asked some one to open a window. Perry, sitting on an outside aisle, sprang to obey. He threw a window wide; and a sporting September breeze, wafting in, lifted a pile of papers from the teacher's desk and scattered them about the room.
"I asked for air," Mr. Quirk said tartly; "not a cyclone."
Perry retrieved the papers. As he came back to his seat along the aisle students winked at him. His face was dark. If they thought he was up to his old tricks—. He tried to catch a glimpse of Praska, but Praska's head happened to be turned the other way.
At noon, in the cafeteria, he merely picked at the food he got at the long service counter. He wished that he could talk with Praska. He wanted to assure him that the things that had happened that morning had not been premeditated. But the football guard, with a group of other football players, sat at a table in a corner. After a while Perry brought back his dishes and wandered out into the school hall.
It did not need a great amount of perspicacity to tell him that his chances had probably become precarious. He had accustomed the school to look to him for buffoonery until now the inclination was to view all his actions as jest and banter. It was driven home to him anew how much reputation is shaped by the things done from day to day. Reputation! His reputation—and Praska's! A bitter smile twitched at his lips.
Yet, because Mr. Banning had given him a vision of leadership, he did not fall back into a reckless mood as of old. Leaders, he told himself, must look ahead. And so, after a time, he came back to Room 13. The clock was about to usher in a study period. A few students were already in the room. Mr. Banning, catching his eye as he entered, beckoned him to his desk.
"Perry," he said, handing him a written order, "will you go down to the office and get me a bottle of red ink?"
The boy departed on the errand, and in the hall met Praska and some of the football fellows on their way to the home room. In the office, what with some scholars presenting excuses for having been absent that morning and others handing in requests to be dismissed before their time that afternoon, there was some delay. The study period had started in Room 13 when Perry returned.
And then, all in an instant, the crowning disaster of the day happened. He was holding out the bottle to Mr. Banning, and the teacher's hand was outstretched to take it. He released the bottle, saw too late that Mr. Banning did not have it, grabbed frantically—and missed. The bottle crashed in pieces on the floor. A pool of red ink spread over the varnish. Some one out in the room among the desks gave an exclamation of despair.
The voice was Praska's.
All through the study period Perry's white face was before Mr. Banning's eyes. At the words of regret that had faltered from the boy's lips the teacher had merely nodded as a sign that he had heard and had sent him back to his seat. But the evidence of that white face could not be denied. Perry had not deliberately slipped the bottle from his grasp. And so, as the period drew to an end, the man, walking down the aisle, dropped another order at the boy's place.
"Get me another bottle sometime to-day," he said in an undertone.
Some of the color came back to Perry's face. As the class filed out, Praska crowded over to him.
"What happened, Perry?"
"It was an accident." He could say no more for there was a choke in his throat.
In the hall Littlefield called to the guard. Perry went on alone to his next recitation. The managership and the bottle of ink, he muttered, had slipped inexorably from his fingers at the same moment. Several times he had felt that he was on the crest of success or in the valley of failure. There could be no doubt about this last happening. He was beaten.
It was indicative of the way he had begun to look at things that, even in this bitter moment, his thoughts went to Room 13. The red stain of the ink was before his eyes. So long as that stain stayed there it would be a reproach. The floor of the room would be marred. There would always be some to say that, in one of his silly gay moments, Perry King had. He winced.
When his last recitation of the day was over, he went down to the office for his ink.
"I broke the other bottle," he said. "I'd like permission to clean up the mess I made."
He came back to Room 13 with the ink; nor did he know that, as he passed up the stairs with the bottle in his hands, Littlefield saw him through an open door of the gym and cried a hurried word over his shoulder to others within the place.
From the home room Perry went down to the manual training department in a basement wing. From the janitor's storeroom he got water in a pail, a brush and some sand. In the wood shop he got varnish stain.
Room 13 was deserted when he came back to it. On his knees, he wet the brush, spread sand over the red splash, and began to rub. It was hard work. The sweat ran down his face, and he took off his collar and opened his shirt at the throat. By and by he mopped up the water and sand and surveyed his labors. The red was fading out.
An hour passed, and then the sand had rubbed off the varnish down to the white boards. His hands and wrists and arms ached. Slowly, carefully, he dried the floor, and then began to fan it with a book. Thirty minutes passed. The floor was dry to his touch. He took the varnish stain and painted over the spot where the ink had been spilled. When he was finished, the floor, save that one place looked fresher, was all the one color. It was no longer marred.
He stood up, stretched his muscles, and sighed. Suddenly, at a sound, he whirled toward the door. Praska was there, and Littlefield and Hammond, the quarterback, and others of the football squad. Perry's face went white once more.
"You had us guessing for a while," said Hammond. "We knew you had the head, Perry, but"
"Why did you bother to clean it?" a voice asked.
"It was a blot on Room 13," said Perry, steadily.
They stood there looking across the room, the football crowd in a group, the lone boy with his collar still unbuttoned. Praska began to chuckle.
"You old bean-pole!" he said affectionately. "We thought we had you figured right. That's the reason we elected you manager of the term."