CHAPTER XIV

MR. COLLINS SMILES

Gerald wrote his letter of apology to Broadwood, it was approved by Mr. Collins, mailed, and in due time elicited a reply from the Principal. It was at once concise, polite, and admonitive. Gerald still has that note pasted in his scrap-book; and, between you and me, he is secretly rather proud of it. And perhaps he has a right to be, for it is the only one of its kind at Yardley.

It didn’t take long for the news of his probation to spread through the school, though there were very few fellows who believed that Gerald had been the sole originator and perpetrator of the Broadwood joke. I’m afraid that to the younger boys Gerald became something of a hero, although he felt a very little one himself. The lessons went well enough, since, confined to his room all the evening, he had plenty of time to study them. At first the others gathered in Number 28 after supper quite frequently, but 7 Dudley had always been a more popular meeting-place, and it wasn’t long before Gerald was left to spend his evenings in solitary grandeur. Dan kept him company as much as possible, but there were plenty of times when Dan’s presence was demanded elsewhere.

Gerald, although prohibited from taking part in the track work, had by no means lost his interest in the team’s success. Dan often tried to console and encourage him by reminding him that next year he could try again, and would stand a much better chance of making the squad. Gerald wasn’t by any means consoled, but there was nevertheless comfort to be derived from the knowledge that there was another year coming. And, meanwhile, he went to the field every afternoon and looked on, feeling rather lonesome and out of it at first, but gradually working into a more philosophic frame of mind. The worst of it was that he really missed the exercise and the training. Sometimes his legs fairly ached to be pounding around the cinders. The training table had been started, and Gerald viewed its members enviously as he passed it going in or out of commons. As far as diet went, however, Gerald was unconsciously in training himself. He had always had pretty healthy notions in regard to food, and ever since the autumn, when he had trained with the Cross Country Team, he had stuck pretty closely to the athlete’s diet.

It was one afternoon, a week or so subsequent to the memorable interview with Mr. Collins, that the Great Idea came to him. He had been watching Roeder and two other fellows practicing broad-jumping, at the same time keeping an eye open for Arthur’s aerial flight at the end of the long pole; and now he strolled over to the start of the distances where a bunch of quarter-milers, Maury, Goodyear, Norcross, and several other distance men were being sent off for a two-lap spin. He wished so much that he were among them, his spikes gripping the track and the wind in his face. Andy gave the word and the runners sprang away, stringing out as they neared the corner. Andy dropped his watch into his pocket, glanced up, and found Gerald looking at him. Since Gerald had been lost to the squad, Andy had paid scant attention to him, which, of course, was natural enough. But to-day something in Gerald’s face prompted the trainer to a kind word.

“Sure, I’m sorry you’re not with ’em, Pennimore,” he said.

“So am I,” murmured Gerald. “I’m just aching for a few laps around the track, Andy.”

The little Irishman looked at him speculatively a moment.

“How long before they’ll let you come back?” he asked. Gerald shook his head.

“They didn’t say.”

“Well, anyway, it would do you no harm to keep your muscles hard, my boy. Get your trunks on and stretch your legs, why don’t you? No one’s stopping you.”

“Could I, do you think?” asked Gerald, eagerly.

“Why not? Sure, they won’t be wanting you to get sick for lack of exercise.”

“I guess I’d better ask Mr. Collins,” said Gerald. “If he lets me I will, you bet!”

“But, mind you, I’ve got nothing to do with it,” warned Andy. “It’s not with the squad you’re to run.”

“I know,” answered Gerald. “But it would be fine to get to work again. Do you think he will let me, Andy?” Andy shrugged his shoulders as he turned to give his attention to the quarter-miler who was tearing down the track toward the finish.

“He might, an’ then again he mightn’t. I’d ask him.”

“I will,” thought Gerald. “And I’ll ask him right now.”

He found the Assistant Principal in his study in Clarke.

“Mr. Collins,” he began, breathlessly, having run most of the way up the hill, “when you’re on probation, sir, can you take exercise?”

Mr. Collins looked startled. Then he smiled broadly.

“Why, I should hope so, Pennimore,” he laughed. “And from your appearance I’d say you’d been taking it.”

“But I mean――I mean _real_ exercise, Mr. Collins,” explained Gerald.

“Ah!” Mr. Collins slipped a paper-knife between the pages of the magazine he held and leaned comfortably back in his deep leather chair. This was his hour of leisure, and he might well have displayed impatience at the interruption. Instead, however, he seemed amused and inclined toward conversation. “Now what do you call ‘real’ exercise, Pennimore? Perhaps wood-chopping; that was Mr. Gladstone’s favorite form of relaxation from brain-work, and I believe Mr. Roosevelt likes to swing an ax on occasions. That isn’t――ah――an ax you are concealing behind you, Pennimore?”

“No, sir.” Gerald showed the article to be a gray woolen cap. “What I meant was exercise like――like running and such things, Mr. Collins.”

“Running?” Mr. Collins looked thoughtful. “Let me see, my boy; you were running with the track squad, were you not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, am I to understand that you want permission to go on with that?”

“No, sir, not with the squad, sir. But I’d like to go down to the track now and then――every day, maybe, and run just by myself. I――I feel the need of it, sir.”

Mr. Collins smiled again. “Muscles getting creaky, you mean?”

“Yes, sir, sort of.”

“Hm; it’s rather a delicate question to answer offhand, Pennimore. Certainly faculty doesn’t want any student on probation to become ill for want of outdoor exercise. The question is whether you are merely after the exercise _per se_ or want to keep in condition for track work in the hope that when you are let off probation you will be in good condition to go back to the squad. See my point?”

“Y――yes, sir.”

“On the other hand,” continued the Assistant Principal, luxuriously stretching his slippered feet, “am I required to go behind the evidence? You ask me whether a student on probation may take exercise. There can be but one reply to that: he may. Possibly it is not required of me to speculate as to your motives. If you may exercise, I presume that you may indulge in any form you wish. You want to run. Well, why not? Running is a common form of exercise. But you tell me that you want to run on the track. Hm.” Mr. Collins deliberated. Then, “And again, why not, Pennimore?” he continued. “The rules say that you must not take part in school athletics, but they say nothing against your exercising on the track. No, so far as the letter of the law is concerned you may run on the track or turn summersaults on it or walk on your hands on it. But the spirit of the law, Pennimore――” Mr. Collins yawned behind his magazine. “Dear me, I believe I’m sleepy. Let me see, where were we?”

“At the――the spirit of the law, sir,” replied Gerald.

Mr. Collins looked surprised. “Were we really?” he asked. “Had we got that far? And what had we decided about the spirit of the law, Pennimore?”

“We――you hadn’t decided, sir,” answered Gerald, puzzledly.

“Too bad, for I fear I’m much too sleepy to decide now. I will take the case under advisement, Pennimore, and let you know my decision later.” He smiled at Gerald’s perplexity. “In the meanwhile, as I have said, there is nothing to keep you from indulging in any form of exercise you like on the track――pending the court’s decision.”

“Thank you, sir!” cried Gerald, eagerly. “And I hope you’ll decide that I may go on with it, Mr. Collins.”

“Tut, tut, you mustn’t try to influence the Court,” said Mr. Collins, sternly.

“I――I wasn’t, sir, really!” Gerald disclaimed, anxiously. Mr. Collins laughed.

“All right, my boy. That was all you wanted to see me about?”

“Yes, sir, thank you.”

“Very well. You’re quite welcome, Pennimore. By the bye, I’m glad to see that you’re getting good marks so far. Don’t let the exercise interfere with school work, Pennimore. If you do, the Court may have to decide against you.”

“No, sir; thank you, sir.”

Gerald retreated to the door, bade the Assistant Principal good afternoon, and scampered away. After the door had closed Mr. Collins put his hands over his head, yawned, and smiled.

“I wonder,” he murmured, “who really worked that Broadwood prank. That boy wouldn’t think of a thing like that in a thousand years!”

Gerald hurried over to the gymnasium and found most of the track squad in the locker-room. Tom Dyer was seated on a bench wrapped in his bath-gown, lazily flexing the muscles of one big arm and awaiting his turn at the shower.

“Hello, Gerald,” he said, as that youth took a seat beside him. “What have you been up to to-day?”

“Nothing much,” answered Gerald. “Just knocking about. Say, Tom, is there any book that tells you how to train for running?”

“Eh? Book? Why, lots, I guess, but I’ve never read any of them. Why?”

“What’s the best one, Tom?”

“Let me see.” Tom scowled a moment and finally named a work on track athletics written by a prominent college trainer. “I guess that’s the most practical of them,” he said. “But books don’t take the place of work, Gerald.”

“I know. I’m going to work, too. I asked Collins and he said I might run on the track if I wanted to――just on my own hook, you know. And I thought that maybe if I had a book to go by I could keep myself in training, and then――if――if they let me off probation in time, perhaps I could get back on the squad again.”

“Well, I like your pluck!” answered Tom, admiringly. “And I guess it’s worth trying. Have you said anything to Maury about it?”

“No, but Andy knows. He says I mustn’t think I’ve got anything to do with the team, though.”

Tom chuckled.

“He’s a foxy codger, Andy is. You come back to the room with me and we’ll look that book up and see where it’s published. It isn’t likely you can find it nearer than New York. We’ll write and send for it, Gerald. I suppose Andy won’t time you; anyway, he won’t tell you what your time is, and you’d ought to know what you’re doing. So I’ll let you take my stopwatch, Gerald. You can run a string in it and sling it around your neck; or you might just carry it in your hand instead of a grip.”

“That would be fine,” said Gerald. “I’ll wait for you, Tom.”

“All right. Hey, you Stevenson! That’s my bath! I won’t be long, Gerald.”

The next afternoon Gerald appeared at the track in running attire. Captain Maury caught sight of him at once, and hurried up to him.

“Have they let you off, Pennimore?” he asked, eagerly. “That’s fine!”

“No,” Gerald explained, “but Collins said I could exercise here, and so I thought I’d just keep in training on my own hook. You know they may let me off in time for the Duals.”

“Oh,” said Maury, disappointedly. “Well, that’s all right. Better keep out of the way of the fellows, though, Pennimore; stay on the outside of the track as much as you can. I wouldn’t expect to get back on the squad, you know, because even if faculty does let you off in time, you’re bound to be sort of stale.”

“But I’m not going to be,” protested Gerald. “I’m going to run almost every day, Maury.”

“Y-yes, but it isn’t the same, you know. Well, I must get busy.”

He nodded to Gerald and hurried off. Gerald was a little disappointed at the track captain’s lack of interest as he followed him over to the starting line. Andy was hard at work with a bunch of half-milers when Gerald reached him, and he had to wait some time before the trainer was ready to give him attention.

“Collins said I could do it, Andy,” announced Gerald.

“Did he? Do what?” Andy demanded.

“Why, run! Don’t you remember you said yesterday――――”

“Sure! All right, Pennimore, but don’t get in the way of the others. And I guess you’d better not talk much to me. They might think I was giving you advice, you see. Remember, my lad, you’re doing this on your lonesome.” He turned away to call, “Sprinters up the track to try starts! And hurry up, every mother’s son of yez!”

Gerald had meant to ask the trainer whether he should jog to-day or try some sprints, but Andy had gone and Gerald consoled himself with the reflection that perhaps it was just as well, since asking advice from Andy was hardly allowable under the terms of his agreement with Mr. Collins. No, if he was going to train by himself he must play fair. So he stepped onto the track, threw aside his robe, and started around at a jog. On his fifth lap the milers passed him, and Goodyear ranged alongside long enough to ask him if he were off probation. When Gerald explained that he was just running for fun――for that seemed the simpler way in which to explain his presence――Goodyear looked vastly surprised. Gerald did his two miles that afternoon, and finished pretty well done up. His idleness told on him. When he reached the gymnasium he found that his reappearance on the track had awakened quite a lot of interest, and he was forced to explain many times that the rumor to the effect that faculty had relented was quite erroneous. Some of his questioners seemed to think that he was doing a very plucky thing in keeping up his training, but most of them considered it a pretty good joke; and Bufford, the hundred-yards man, coined the phrase “The Pennimore Track Team.” But Gerald didn’t mind. At least the fellows he liked best, notably Dan and Arthur and Alf and Tom, were properly sympathetic and interested. And, all that aside, probation had lost much of its sting, and it was delicious to feel physically tired and ravenously hungry again. He and Arthur walked back to the latter’s room after showers, and talked it all over there, Harry Merrow for once being out of the way.

“It’s going to be rather dreary work, though, I’m afraid,” Arthur said. “You’re bound to lose heart after a bit, Gerald. Doing anything all by yourself like that isn’t so much fun. But you try and keep it up.”

“I’m going to,” answered Gerald, stoutly. “And I don’t believe it’s going to be so hard. I love to run, Arthur, and I’d just like to show Maury that I’m not a back-number, after all. Next Monday, I’m going to give myself a time-trial.”

“Well,” Arthur laughed, “don’t be too hard on yourself if you don’t do it well. Got any appetite?”

“Appetite!” cried Gerald, springing up. “I could eat a whale!”

“All right, let’s go over and see if they’ve got any to-night.”