affected sternness, "sit there till I want you," and he pointed to a bench, even while frowning at the others of the disheartened delegation, who scuttled away down-stairs in dread of the Doctor's rising wrath. When all were gone and the big, bare school-rooms were still, Pop looked up from a letter he was writing, beckoned with his long forefinger, then reversing the hand, pointed downward at the floor beside his desk, and Shorty, recognizing the signal, with leaping heart and twitching lips, marched up and took his stand, looking dumbly into the Doctor's pallid face. The great man shoved his gold-rimmed spectacles half-way up across the expanse of forehead the lads had likened to "a ten-acre lot," folded his hands across the voluminous waistcoat, and leaned back in his chair. Then his eyes swept downward.
"Has our friend Snipe often been in need of money?" he asked.
"He had hardly any at all, sir," blurted Shorty, with something like a sob. "There are holes in the soles of his shoes and corresponding holes worn in his stockings, and the skin of the soles of his feet'll go next. He never had enough to get a decent lunch with, and couldn't join our first nine last year because he hadn't the uniform and wouldn't ask for one. The Club subscribed and bought it, – he was so bully a player. All the – "
The Doctor knows that Shorty is not named because of brevity in speech, and upraises a white hand. "Did he owe any of the boys, – Hoover, for instance?"
"He wouldn't borrow," said Shorty, indignantly; "last of all from Hoover. None of us ever owe him anything except – " And Shorty gulps, and the tears that were starting to his eyes burn out before the sudden fire of his wrath.
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