“Jason!” cried Wilmot, loudly. “Beware of the man with one shoe!”
About one first class boy in five understood the reference, and this one was immediately besought by his four ignorant companions to explain the joke, for joke they were sure it must be. Johnny Cable, the book-learned but otherwise incapable, was in excessive demand for the next few minutes to clear up the mystery. These few minutes Dunn employed in strengthening his defence of indifference and preparing himself for the coming questions as to what Mr. Westcott had said to him, and what he was going to do to Mike. He answered the questions in very ambiguous terms, but his threats against the chief agent in his misfortunes were no less awful because of their vagueness, while the grins of a dozen fifth class boys at the long table opposite kept his wrath at the boiling-point. Ben Tracy at last succeeded in diverting the general interest to Redfield, who had made a new record that morning in the smashing of glass tubes in the laboratory.
But the fifth were not to be diverted. They had no need of Cable’s learning to explain Wilmot’s comparison. Having fought their way, line by line, through sundry tales of Greek heroes presented in simple Latin, they knew the stories from end to end. “Jason Dunn!” they whispered ecstatically to one another along the table. The names fitted as if made to go together. No combination could be better!
“We’ll call him Jason after this,” proposed Dickie Sumner, Jack’s younger brother. “Nobody can help saying it after he’s heard it once.”
This suggestion was put into practice as soon as the youngsters left the table. They gathered at the door and sang out in chorus three times before they scattered: “Jason Dunn! Jason Dunn! What has Jason done?”
“Fresh little mutts!” exclaimed Tracy, in disgust. “That’s the result of being tied up with a kindergarten. Let’s go out and wring their necks!”
“Don’t notice ’em,” said Wilmot. “They’ll forget it to-morrow if you let ’em alone.”
But the title stuck. Before a week was out, the name, Archie Dunn, or Baldie Dunn, ceased to be heard on a boy’s lips. It had become Jason Dunn.
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