Page:St. Nicholas (serial) (IA stnicholasserial321dodg).pdf/219

1904] “You were up too late last night, dear, were n’t you?” she asked.

“I guess so,” returned Neil, “I think I ’ll sleep awhile after breakfast.”

He attended to his small tasks about home when breakfast was over, and then was glad to go to his room to be alone, if not to sleep. He threw himself upon the bed and tried to ease his now throbbing head. But all in vain.

“I guess I am sick!” he muttered to himself, as he tossed about restlessly; and then he lay suddenly still and thought about his own words. Sick? He certainly was close to it now. He tried to remember whether his head had ached when he first jumped out of bed that morning. No, he did not think it had. Still he must have been sick then—.or—or he would n’t have overslept—and the headache would n’t have come on so soon afterward. If he was quite sure he must have been sick. What was it the contract said? There was one excuse for failure to keep it “to the letter.”

He felt his cheek growing hot, and he turned the cooler side of his pillow up and buried his face in it. Was he not justified in reporting himself as having been sick that morning? Who was to contradict him if he did? Was he not himself the best judge? Who else was there to report to Dr. Ferris upon the matter, anyway? For that matter, how was Dr. Ferris to know anything at all about how he did the work, except what Neil himself chose to report? The matter was certainly in his own hands.

Neil was lying very quiet now, and looking up at the ceiling with eyes which were feverishly bright with excitement. Why not? Why not? Over and over through his mind ran that question. Certainly he had been—at least he was—sick enough to justify that excuse for his mistake. Then why not give it, or, for that matter, why report the mistake at all?

For more than an hour the boy thought the matter over, till his aching brain was tired out with it, and then suddenly his weariness overcame him and he dropped off to sleep.

It was nearly noon when he awoke. His first sensation on opening his eyes was the pleasant one that his headache was gone and that mind and body were rested and refreshed. Then almost instantly came recollection of the thoughts which had been in his mind when he fell asleep. With a start he sat up and looked around guiltily, and then suddenly a great repulsion for the idea filled his heart, and he sprang to his feet with an exclamation of disgust.

“How could I do such a thing? Would that be square?” he whispered. “Well, I think not.”

It was useless for Neil to try to convince himself that the morning work of those next three months was not one long hard strain. It was just that. But because it was honest work, well done for an honest purpose, and because it was backed by a simple determination to be “square,” it was somehow very satisfactory indeed when it was finished. Of course there were days, sometimes even weeks, when it was a veritable fight; but as he began to see that it