To say that the Westcott lads felt indignant at being thus advertised as unscrupulous cheats when they knew themselves absolutely innocent, is like describing a raving maniac as the victim of hallucination. They boiled and bubbled with rage. If President John had shown himself at the corner of Otway Street at that moment, they would have flown to mob him, though every bell in the Westcott school were clanging in their ears. But as the exalted official did not present himself to be mobbed, and the school gong did ring, they filed obediently in, and taking their seats, brooded in sullen bitterness on the outrage. A boy’s sense of justice—or, as some one has better expressed it, sense of injustice—is always morbidly keen. The boys at Westcott’s were used to a life in which the good things flowed in on them naturally, with few questions as to whether they were deserved or undeserved. Good behavior, fair work, regard for their parents’ wishes, constituted the price they were expected to pay; even on this discounts were sometimes allowed. Flat over-riding of just rights had entered into their experience as little as physical hardship. They reared against the blow like a young, high-spirited horse which feels for the first time the sting of a cruel whip.
After the morning Scripture reading, to which, it is to be feared, few gave heed, Mr. Westcott called Harrison and Wilmot into his office, where he kept them for a quarter of an hour. The other football men, if they could have had their hearts’ desire, would have sat outside the office, matching expletives, until their comrades should come forth and give them the history of the interview. This being for obvious reasons impossible, the excited lads kept their curiosity under control and went about their morning tasks with what interest they could muster,—wrestling, nauseated, with the dullness of Burke on Conciliation, abusing good English by turning it into worse than peasant German, and finding Cicero’s maledictions on Catiline but weak and watery dilutions compared with the things they could say of President John Smith. Dunn alone of those especially concerned studied that morning with absolute diligence; he did this in self-defence, to keep his thoughts from a subject—more disagreeable than lessons—to which they would wander if his grip upon them slackened but a moment.