Breaking Away | Page 5

use. I mention the fact to his discredit, and it would have been a luxury to me to have had him manifest interest enough in my welfare to refuse my request.
I was naturally enterprising and fearless, and was therefore foremost in all feats of daring, in all trials of skill in athletic games. Indeed, to sum up the estimate which was made of me by my associates in school and the people of Parkville, I was "a smart boy." Perhaps my vanity was tickled once or twice by hearing this appellation applied to me; but I am sure I was not spoiled by the favor with which I was regarded.
Though I was not an unhappy boy, there was an aching void in my heart which I could not fill, a longing for such a home as hundreds of my young friends enjoyed; and I would gladly have exchanged the freedom from restraint for which others envied me for the poorest home in the town, where I could have been welcomed by a fond mother, where I could have had a kind father to feel an interest in me.
During the spring, summer, and autumn months, when the wind and weather would permit, I went to school in my sail-boat. My course lay along the shore, and if I was becalmed and likely to be tardy, I had only to moor my craft, and take to the road. At the noon intermission, therefore, my boat was available for use, and I always had a party.
On the day that I was called up charged with fighting, the Splash--for that was the suggestive name I had chosen for my trim little craft--was lying at the boat pier on the lake in front of the Institute building. The forenoon session of the school had just closed, and I had gone to the boat to eat my dinner, which I always carried in the stern locker.
Before I had finished, Bill Poodles came down with an Arithmetic in his hand. It was the dinner hour of the boarding students, and I wondered that Bill was not in the refectory. Our class had a difficult lesson in arithmetic that day, which I had worked out in the solitude of my chamber at the cottage the preceding evening. The students had been prohibited, under the most severe penalty, from assisting each other; and it appeared that Bill had vainly applied to half a dozen of his classmates for help: none of them dared to afford it.
Bill Poodles was a disagreeable fellow, arrogant and "airy" as he was lazy and stupid. I doubt whether he ever learned a difficult task alone. The arithmetic lesson was a review of the principles which the class had gone over, and consisted of a dozen examples, printed on a slip of paper, to test the knowledge of the students; and it was intimated that those who failed would be sent down into a lower class. Bill dreaded anything like a degradation. He was proud, if he was lazy. He knew that I had performed the examples, and while his fellow-boarders were at dinner, he had stolen the opportunity to appeal to me for the assistance he so much needed.
Though Bill was a disagreeable fellow, and though, in common with a majority of the students, I disliked him, I would willingly have assisted him if the prohibition to do so had not been so emphatic. Mr. Parasyte was so particular in the present instance, that the following declaration had been printed on the examination paper, and each boy was required to sign it:--
"I declare upon my honor, that I have had no assistance whatever in solving these examples, and that I have given none to others."
Bill begged me to assist him. I reasoned with him, and told him he had better fail in the review than forfeit his honor by subscribing to a falsehood. He made light of my scruples; and then I told him I had already signed my own paper, and would not falsify my statement.
"Humph!" exclaimed he, with a sneer. "You hadn't given any one assistance when you signed, but you can do it now, and it will be no lie."
I was indignant at the proposition, it was so mean and base; and I expressed myself squarely in regard to it. I had finished my dinner, and, closing the locker, stepped out of the boat upon the pier. Bill followed me, begging and pleading till I was disgusted with him. I told him then that I would not do what he asked if he teased me for a month. He was angry, and used insulting language. I turned on my heel to leave him. He interpreted this movement on my part as an act of cowardice, and, coming up behind me, struck