Part 31 (1/2)
”I got in after hours last night, sir,” reported Tom quietly, though he resented the man's manner.
”Ha! So I was informed by the watchman.” He looked at Tom antagonistically. ”Well,” he snapped, ”why don't you continue? There's more, isn't there?”
”Not that I know of,” replied Tom calmly. ”I had permission to go to town, but I got in late, that's all.”
”Oh, is it? What about the student who was with you? Wasn't there some one with you?”
”Yes, sir.”
”And didn't he engage in a fight with the watchman, and, taking advantage of a mean trick, sneak to his room? Didn't he, I ask you?”
”I presume the watchman has correctly informed you of what happened.”
Tom's voice was coldly indifferent now, and the proctor recognized that fact.
”He did,” he snapped. ”And you know of it, too. I expected you to tell me that.”
”Since when has it been a college rule,” asked Tom, ”to confess to the doings of another student? I thought that all that was required of me was to report my own infraction of the rules.”
Tom knew that he was right and that the proctor had no authority to ask him concerning the doings of Langridge, and the proctor knew that he himself was in the wrong, which knowledge, shared as it was by a student, did not add to his good temper.
”Then you refuse to say who was with you?” he snapped, his eyes fixed on Tom's face.
”I certainly refuse to inform on a fellow student, Mr. Zane,” was Tom's answer, ”and I don't think you have any right to ask me to do so.”
If he had stopped with his first half of the reply all might have been well, for certainly the proctor did not expect Tom or any other student to be a tale-bearer, though he always asked them to speak in order to make more easy his own task. But to be practically defied, and by a freshman, was too much for the official, who had a certain dignity of which he was proud.
”Ha!” he exclaimed, ”you are impertinent, Parsons.”
”I didn't so intend, sir.”
”Ha! I don't have to be informed of my rights by you. I know them. You will write me out two hundred lines of Virgil by to-morrow afternoon and you will stand suspended for two weeks, with absolutely no privileges regarding athletics or going away from college!”
It was a hard sentence under any circ.u.mstances. It was an unjust one in Tom's case, and he knew it. Yet what could he do?
”Very well, sir,” he replied, trying to overcome a certain trembling feeling in his throat, and he turned to go.
”If,” went on the proctor in a slightly more conciliatory voice, ”you think better of your resolution and let me know the name of the student who so outrageously a.s.saulted the watchman, I may find it possible to mitigate your punishment. Mind, I am not asking you to inform me in an ordinary case of breaking the rules, but for an extraordinary infraction.
The watchman has a badly injured leg. So, if you wish to inform me later, I will be glad to hear from you.”
”I shall not change my mind,” said Tom simply.
”Nor I mine,” added the proctor, jerking out the words quickly.
Tom turned on his heel and left the room.
CHAPTER XXII