The Washington herald., 1921-07-03

:,
matriculate-the old Rugby game was a hoh-
day for him He ran with nerceness un-
known to the school backs. sliding OF tack
Iers one after another. and he followed the
bah like a hawk.
Bill really proclaimed himself an Amer
lean that term. for the first time. The school
was surprised, and inclined to be offended
1t took Little and Murray calmly enough.
They were real Americans: you couldn't mis-
take them Ted talked through his nose,
rather; their speech was shot with strange
and highly colored bits Of foreign idiom-
Say" Ted would cry. hailing some one;
never Il say.- And II you asked him a
question to which the aswer was afirma-
tive it was always You bed" instead Of
Rather!-
There had been. In the beginning. fmper-
tinences about Indians In the streets Of
New York; sneering comments concerning
the crudeness Of American life But Ted
had fought a few times, in the classic ring
near the fves court, and the school had
become strangely reluctant to harry him
upon his nativity thereafter.
But what was right and natural and
according to kind in the case Of Ted or Jim
was rank swank and accordingly to be put
down when it proceeded from Bill - from
young Halliday. who had grown up in the
school. and was, to all outward seeming. as
English as any of them There was be-
wilderment in the attitude the school took
toward him, of course. too: why IN the world
should any fellow keep insisting he was an
American when no one would know it unless
he admitted it?
Every morning. through the long winter.
Bill struggled to wakefulness a full fifteen
minutes before the rest Of the dormitory,
slipped on a bathrobe over his pajamas. and
padded through long. dark corridors to the
shower bath near the fves court. where he
and Ted and Jim submitted themselves to
the shock OF icy water. Ted had proclaimed
his wonder and his dismay at the discovery
that the bathrooms were open only At a
stated time, when the school bathed In
groups, once a week, and had gained permis-
sion to use this almost forgotten shower.
at home,- he told Bill -Golly-you hear
a lot about the way an Englishman takes
his tub every morning but look at EN- hersl
A bath once a week-and that's q rulel-
onv t,
Freakish customs were allowable in a real
foreigner like Ted but it was plain cheek
when Halliday did the same thing. Bill, who
had never before. in all his years at the
school, been prominent, began to be distinct
ly unpopular.
Restraints that had never irked him before
began, in the light Of what Ted and Murray
knew Of freedom at home. to be intoierahle-
In the Sixth, to be sure. the bounds were
wide. You could walk for miles along roads
lined with hedges full of blackberries, even
In late November; even Ted approved o
British berries, and conceded their supera-
GRITTY to those Of home. You could 30 into
Beds any afternoon, and drink coffee and
eat cake in a dingy shop, with its mock
magniicence Of red plush cushions. You
could stare at the Jail in which John Bunyan
had been confned-for that matter. though,
you could see John Bunyan's house At
Elstow by looking across the fields from the
dornitory windows. You could hire q boat
and row on the sluggish ouse. But that
noble stream, that the British called a river.
provoked ribald laughter in Ted and Jim
Its not q river! 1t isn't even creek!
It's a brookr' said Jim And Ted agreed, and
they talked of rivers a mile wide, until Bill
groaned
Christmas came. and for Bill two weeks at
swaythDng. There was good Christmas
cheer out he longed for snow; he couldn't
even skate. He had wanted to ask Ted home
for the holidays but his mother had written
that IL would not be convenient. Yet the
house had been no more than half fun Of
guests Rack to school after that and the
lcng grind until Easter in London. when he
did see something OF Ted. Bill hated the
second winter term at school Football was
all over; hockey had never appealed to him:
he thought II a girls game And Ted talked
of what he called real hockey. which you
played on the ice skating after puck
endow ed with life as it slid across the frozen
surface Of rink