CHAPTER III NEIGHBORLY ATTENTIONS

There was trouble on the second floor in the east entry of Hale. This being the Pecks' entry, and the Pecks habitually furnishing the nucleus for small storm-centres, the mere existence of trouble here would hardly seem worth noting. As this particular trouble, however, led to another which in turn produced a general condition affecting all the occupants of the floor directly, and all the curious of all locations indirectly,—it seems desirable to make a brief statement of the facts in the case.

The Pecks, for reasons of their own, had decided that it was essential to the proper development of the Moons that the latters' room be "stacked." Stacking a room, or "ripping it up," as will be acknowledged even by those who disapprove of the process, is, when compared with its predecessor, hazing, a mild and gentle method of incul[Pg 24]cating humility and modesty. It consists simply in piling together in as big and promiscuous a heap as possible whatever movable objects the room contains,—furniture, utensils, clothing, ornaments,—and leaving this monument as an interesting surprise for the occupants on their return. It involves, of course, a wanton interference with the property rights of others. It often results in permanent injury to valuable possessions, as when books and clothing are soaked with water, or china is smashed, or some memento dear to the owner's heart is so damaged as to be rendered wholly incapable of ever again suggesting the slightest humanizing sentiment. But the wisdom of boys is not the wisdom of the wise, and the Pecks are not represented in this narrative as models of considerateness.

The Moons were "preps." Their father was a manufacturer who dominated the little town in Connecticut in which he lived. Reginald, the younger, timid and childish, was a "kid"; his brother Clarence, sleek in figure and dress, and ignorantly pretentious by training, foolishly sought to make up for the position of insignifi[Pg 25]cance in which he found himself at school by dwelling upon his importance at home. The Pecks, sons of a congressman and nephews of a distinguished judge, holding this method of self-glorification quite out of place in the school republic, determined to make clear to the Moons, by a plain object lesson, the value of humility. While the juniors were safely enclosed for a full hour in the Latin room, the law-breaking twins invaded the Moon rooms and spent three-quarters of an hour in rearing a heap which, from its foundations of bed frames to the dome of crockery on top, showed great promise of architectural ability. Then they displayed themselves at the gymnasium and fell in with the Moons on the way homeward, as the swarm of Latinists poured forth from recitation.

They entered the dormitory in pairs, Duncan and Reginald in front, Clarence delayed by Donald's loitering. At the head of the stairs Duncan parted from his companion, and, with the air of one who had important work to do, entered his room and shut the door hard behind him. Once inside, however, this important work proved to[Pg 26] be nothing more than to glue his ear to the crack of the door and wait. He heard Reggie walk down the entry to his room, he heard the voices of the lagging pair rising from the stairs, then quick steps hurrying to meet them, sudden ejaculations, and the dash of all three toward the preps' room. There was nothing left for him then but to bottle his impatience and depend on Donald to give him a fair show.

And Donald proved a safe reliance. The Moons' door opened; voices and steps approached. Duncan had barely time to dart to his desk and seize a book when Donald burst in with Clarence at his elbow. In clumsily feigned surprise, the student looked up at the invaders, his glance resting but for an instant on the countenance of his brother, whose look of malicious joy, poorly cloaked by an unnatural trait of solemnity, would have aroused immediate suspicion in an acute observer. On Clarence's pink-and-white face anger and fright struggled together for expression. Both twins found relief in Donald's exclamation:—

"Some one has ripped up the Moons' room. Come in and see it!"

[Pg 27]

The trio hastened back to the dishevelled room.

"Gee whiz, what a pile!" exclaimed Duncan in a veritable shock of admiration as he came suddenly in sight of the desolation. He had looked upon his finished work but a few minutes before and found it sufficient; but now, as the scene suddenly flashed its fresh impression upon him, his surprise was almost real. As a monument of havoc the heap was a work of art.

"They didn't do a thing to you, did they! Who was it, anyway?"

"Some fresh guy!" came in answer from Clarence's trembling lips. "He ought to be fired!"

"That's right," declared Donald. "The only trouble is to find out who it is."

"About everything you own seems to be in the thing, doesn't it?" observed Duncan, throwing a glance about the denuded room. "Did they wet it down?"

Wet it down! Poor Clarence gasped with horror, but, recovering himself, sprang forward and felt anxiously about amongst the muddle of bedstead legs, bureau drawers, books, and blankets. There was no sign of water there. He dropped[Pg 28] upon his knees and examined the floor. It was dry. Meantime Donald had screwed his face into a grimace and leered across at Duncan; his double had grinned back and chuckled. This chuckle and the tail-end of the grin Clarence caught as he picked himself up from the floor, and lost in consequence any comfort which he might have derived from his inspection.

"Funny, ain't it!" he cried fiercely. "I guess you wouldn't laugh if it was your room!"

"No, I shouldn't," returned Duncan, sobering instantly. "It's mighty mean of me, I know, but I just couldn't help it. The whole mix-up struck me so hard that the laugh slipped out before I knew it. I won't do it again."

"When was it done?" asked Donald, making haste to get away from dangerous ground.

"While we were in Latin," returned Clarence, somewhat mollified. "Were you fellows at the Gym the whole hour?"

"We were here awhile," confessed Donald, looking hard at the leg of a chair that pointed reprovingly at him from the depths of the pile.

"Did you hear any one come in here?"

[Pg 29]

In the classroom Donald answered all questions addressed to the Pecks which were not indubitably intended for his brother, but under circumstances like the present, when mother-wit rather than book learning was required, he had the habit of falling back upon Duncan.

"Did we, Dun?" he asked, apparently trying to recollect.

Duncan hesitated. "I guess we were too much interested in what we were doing to listen to outside things," he said at length; and, turning hastily away to avoid his brother's eye, he sauntered around the pile.

Donald likewise sought diversion on his side. "What's this?" he called, pulling out a wad of striped cloth from under the edge of a blanket. "Seems to be wet."

"My pajamas!" groaned Clarence.

Now of course Donald knew what the wad was quite as well as Clarence; but the garments had been so folded and twisted and knotted inside and out that at first sight they offered a very decent impromptu imitation of Alexander's famous Gordian puzzle about which the juniors had been[Pg 30] reading that very day in their histories. So it wasn't really so difficult for the evil-minded Peck to counterfeit surprise and curiosity as he turned the bundle in his hands and made ineffectual attempts to snap it out.

The other tormentor was ready with advice. "You'd better get those knots out right off. If you let 'em dry, you can't blow 'em apart with dynamite."

Clarence ground his teeth and set to work in silence. Donald was pretending to assist him. Duncan, with hands in his pockets, strolled over to the bedroom door, where it was safe to grin and gloat. This was rare fun! Other fellows had had their rooms stacked,—in fact, the Pecks' own room had been treated in much the same way the first year they were in school,—but no one yet had stacked a room and been present as sympathizer at the moment of discovery. And that fool Clarence needed the humiliation if ever a fellow did. "Prince of Bentonville" they called him at home, did they? (This delectable fact Reggie had imprudently confided to some faithless gossip, who joyously published it abroad.)[Pg 31] There was no place for princes here, or babies either.

At the threshold of the bedroom the vandal paused and let his exultant gaze sweep the havoc-stricken room, from the glaring unshaded windows on the right, over the rectangles of dust on the floor where the beds had been, along the festoon of knotted neckties strung between light-fixture and radiator, to the heap of rugs crushed into the corner. On this corner his look hung, and the smirk of satisfaction on his pudgy countenance faded abruptly away. Here, on the only resting-place the dismantled room afforded, lay Reginald, face downward, sobbing his grief into the dusty folds.

Now Duncan, malefactor that he was, had his heart in the right spot. The sight of the little chap plunged in woe through his agency stirred him most unpleasantly. He knew at once that it was not vexation that produced the spasm of tears, but genuine homesickness, made poignant by this wanton act of an unknown enemy; and homesickness appealed to Duncan when weakness and babyishness received no tolerance. He[Pg 32] had been homesick himself once, when Donald with scarlet fever monopolized the house and Duncan spent dreary weeks of banishment with a boy-hating aunt in the country. The misery of that exile was still a painful memory. Poor Reggie! They hadn't meant to discipline that little chap!

He put his hand on Reginald's shoulder. "Come, cheer up, Reggie! It isn't so bad as it looks. We'll soon make it all right again." But Reggie, ashamed of his tears, buried his nose still deeper in the rugs.

"Oh, cheer up!" repeated the comforter. "Lots of fellows have had just as big a stack in their rooms and simply laughed at it. Pluck up, and put your traps back and say nothing about it. That's the way to manage a thing like this. You're man enough for that, I know!"

Reggie sat up, struggling to choke back the sobs. The storm was going by.

"That's the way! Got a handkerchief? Here, take mine. Now let's go out and tackle the mess. I'll take the things down and you put 'em away, see?"

[Pg 33]

Clarence and Donald were still at work on the pajamas when Duncan appeared in the study, pushing before him the flushed, reluctant Reginald. Duncan yanked a chair from the side of the pile, and standing on it began to strip off the top layer and pass the articles down to Reginald.

"What're you doing, Dun?" demanded Donald.

"Helping these fellows clear up," replied Duncan coolly. "Pitch in, can't you? Here's a pillow, Reggie, catch! and a blanket, too. Get a move on you there, Clarence, and pull out that waste-basket of shirts! We aren't going to do all the work while you stand around with your hands in your pockets. Here! take this towel rack into the bedroom."

Clarence obeyed, though with reluctance. Reginald was hurrying to and fro on his errands with cheerfulness suddenly restored.

"You big fool!" ejaculated Donald, planting himself before his brother's chair.

"Thank you!" returned Duncan, unruffled, with a warning squint in the direction of Clarence. "Why this compliment?"

[Pg 34]

Donald turned and perceived Clarence staring at the pair with all his eyes.

"Because you ought to be doing your Latin," he answered. "You haven't looked at it; you'll flunk it dead."

Duncan grunted. "A bas the Latin. You'll read it to me!"

"Hanged if I will!" retorted Donald, and went out, slamming the door behind him.

Sad to relate, when Duncan returned to his room an hour later, having borne the burden of the restoration of the Moons to order and happiness, Donald read to him not the Latin but a vigorously phrased lecture, bristling with slang and exclamation points, which naturally provoked recrimination, and a long and heated argument. And sadder yet, poetic justice failed to tip the scales in the right direction; the Latin instructor did flunk poor Duncan dead.