And Ward Hill was happy. His heart was exulting over his success, and the praise of his fellows was doubly sweet to him after his long period of trouble. He knew he had done well, and the consciousness that Tim Pickard at last had been compelled to come to him for aid, was perhaps not the least of the sources of his enjoyment.
As the boys came up to the campus and turned the corner by the chapel, Tim and Ripley stood there talking with some of the Burr boys. They could not fail to perceive Ward in the midst of the crowd, but neither Tim nor Ripley gave any signs of recognition.
Ward turned to Jack and laughed aloud, so loudly that both Tim and Ripley heard him, and a flush of anger spread over their faces.
"Tim would rather have lost the game than have had it won in the way it was," said Ward, as he started to leave Jack and go to his own room.
"Oh, well," replied Jack gleefully, "you can’t blame Tim for making a wry face over swallowing his dose; but it may do him good, after all."
In his heart just at that moment he cared but little about Tim Pickard’s feelings toward him. In the flush of success and the apparent return of his popularity he could afford to be magnanimous, and Tim and all his petty torments seemed now to be too slight to be heeded.
For two or three days Ward’s long hit was the one theme of the school. Not all of the boys, however, joined in singing his praises, for Tim was not without his followers, and his influence was sufficiently strong to hold them back; but the enthusiasm of the others more than atoned for the failures, and Ward Hill was far happier than he had ever been since he became a student in the Weston school.
The consciousness of having done good work in his classes was the main foundation of it all. The appeals of Little Pond, and the manner in which he himself, with Jack’s aid, had met and stopped the stacking of his room, also helped him now, and he rejoiced that he had not stooped to retaliate in Tim’s room, as he had been sorely tempted to do.
It may be that his success, and the sudden change which had come in his standing in the school, may have led Ward unknowingly to assume a new air. If he did, it was done wholly unconsciously, but in some way he had come to glance sneeringly at Tim whenever he met him. He felt so strong now that he could afford to condescend even to Tim Pickard himself.