Before the boys separated on the evening which they spent together at Mr. Nevins’, they were closeted an hour in Arthur’s bedroom. What grave consultations were held, and what profound ideas were originated in their teeming noddles, will probably never be fully known, save that as they parted, Bertie shouted back: “Good night; now we’ve got him a-going, let’s keep him a-going.”
CHAPTER XIII. THE SCHOLARS SUSTAIN JAMES.
The next morning Peter, Bertie, John, and Will Edibean, the Nevins boys, and Edward Conly, by pure accident, entered the schoolroom at the same moment with James, and some little time before the master came.
James, as usual, made directly for his seat; but they all surrounded and crowded him along to the fireplace, and instantly the Wood boys, the Kingsburys, the Kendricks, Stillman Russell, and all the girls, got round him, shook hands with him, told him he did just right, the day before, that those boys had always domineered over the smaller scholars, set them on to mischief, and made trouble in school, and with the master when they could. James, to his amazement, found himself the centre of an admiring crowd; he blushed and fidgeted, stood first upon one foot, then upon the other, and rolled up his eyes, till Bertie, fearing he would burst into tears, as he did when he received his new clothes, took him by the hand, and said,—
“Come, James, let us look over the reading-lesson before the master gets here.”
When recess came, Peter and Bertie went to his seat, and asked James to go out and play with them. This, to use a homely phrase, “struck him all of a heap.”
“How can I go? I don’t know how to play any of your plays.”
“We are not going to play plays or wrestle, but fire snowballs at a mark, and you are first-rate at that,” said Peter.
James still declined; but Bertie stuck to him like bird-lime, and so did Peter, who called Ned Conly, whom James particularly liked, to aid them; but all in vain, till at length Bertie said,—
“Come, James, if you don’t want to go upon your own account, go to please me; this is the first thing I ever asked you to do for me.”
James rose directly; and Bertie, taking him by the hand, led him out of the house in triumph. The windows of the school were furnished with board shutters, and the boys had utilized one of them for a target by propping it with stones, and making three circles on it, and a bull’s eye in the centre. The boys, having heard how well James could throw stones, stipulated that he should stand six paces farther from the target than the rest, otherwise, they said, “there would be no chance for them.”